


An Internal Affair

by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth (nirejseki)



Series: Coldflash Week 2018 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coldflash Weeks 2018, Cop!Leonard Snart, Disabled Character, Identity Reveal, M/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-23 07:54:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 133,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/robininthelabyrinth
Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you're on his list, you're in serious trouble.His next target?A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who's developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Coldflash Week: Role Reversal
> 
> Also filling the prompt: ColdFlash Instead of becoming a thief, Len became a cop. He's in internal affairs and determined to never let another cop get away with the things his dad did. Then Barry gets his powers and starts disappearing at strange times. Talking to people outside the precinct about active cases. ect. Clearly Len has to find the truth, and if all's well, then at least he'll have an excuse to spend time with the hot lab tech

"Forgive me if I don't get up to say hello," Len drawls as Captain Singh walks into his office. He leans back in his office chair and gestures vaguely towards one of the seats, because if he doesn’t Singh will take one anyway. 

Singh smiles tightly. He’s trying to be nice, but it’s hard for him. He takes a seat and makes an effort to make the smile more appropriate for the nice, friendly chat that they’re not actually going to have. "Of course not," he said, nodding at Len's injured side like he knows something. 

He knows _nothing_.

Oh, it's common knowledge by now that Leonard Snart, one of the CCPD's finest undercover agents, recruited into the joint task force with the FBI, had been grounded at last when information about his identity had slipped out to such a degree that those who had worked with him in the criminal underworld had turned on him. 

Everyone knows, also, that Leonard Snart took a bullet to the gut and another to the thigh and that he's still healing from them, but that he refused time off and insisted on coming back to work – even accepting a position that was largely a desk job to do so.

Everyone knows, last but certainly not least, that Leonard Snart is a hell of a lot smarter than he seems, because his humble acceptance of a desk job (to keep busy, he said, with a straight face and a bowed head) that was designed to keep him out of trouble was in fact just another stratagem, because it got Leonard Snart the job he's been angling to get for who knows how long.

Internal Affairs.

 _Head_ of Internal Affairs. 

Leonard Snart's time spent underground – over a decade at least, and possibly two – gathering invaluable information on the criminal world had been rewarded with a promotion and an assignment to a seat that most cops reviled.

That wasn't an issue for Leonard Snart, as the department soon discovered, because he hated most cops just as much in return. 

Abusive father that used to be a cop, the whispers said – they'd always known that, of course, but no one had put two and two together until Leonard Snart had been made a Captain and spent his first month on the job systematically destroying men's careers with an icy smile that never wavered.

Captain Cold, they called him – sneers and mockery at first, but as he took down one untouchable after another, men and women who were infamously corrupt but (it had been believed) unable to be removed, the term changed to one of fear and respect.

Mostly fear. Not a little bit of hatred, too, for the man who seemed to have nothing to hide and nothing to lose and whose entire existence, now, seemed wrapped around a vendetta aimed not at the criminals but at the CCPD who enabled them.

It's just as Len said: they know nothing.

Oh, it's all true, all of it, all the rumors, everything from his piece of shit of an ex-cop dad to his time undercover to his manipulation of the system to get the position and power he wanted.  
It's the details that matter most. 

He hadn't just been shot when some asshole at the CCPD let slip who he was, leading eventually to someone telling the Families about him. He'd been kidnapped. Tortured.

Sentenced to a slow and painful death, all alone in the dark.

And he would have died, too, if Mick Rory hadn't come to save him. 

Mick Rory, arsonist, pyromaniac, thief, muscle, thug.

Mick Rory, committed criminal.

Mick Rory, Leonard Snart's best and maybe only goddamn friend in the whole wide world, who Len had lied to from day one and kept lying to through thick and thin. Who Len had used. For his friendship, for his strength, for his credibility in the criminal community, and he’d given him back nothing but lies.

Despite all of that, Mick came for him. 

Mick fought through the assholes guarding the door and he shot the assholes who were torturing Len and he got Len out.

Mick got Len away from the Families, carried him in his arms while he was bleeding and crying like a child. He got Len to the hospital, to safety, even though he knew Len was a cop now, a pig like all the others. 

Then, when the police assigned to guard Len's room arrived and kicked him out, he went home.

And at home…

The Families fire-bombed his house that night, knowing that his pyromania would keep him from saving himself. They were right. He survived only due to a fluke, a part of the building falling fast enough to extinguish the fire faster than expected. 

Mick Rory now lies in a hospital bed in a very high end burn clinic in Keystone City as the doctors try to salvage what they can, nearly two-thirds of his body burned. 

Len never even had a chance to thank him.

Lewis Snart might've been the one that taught Len what a corrupt cop looked like, but it was what the cops did to Mick Rory that makes Len hate them. 

"Can I help you?" Len says to Captain Singh, head of the midtown precinct, who seems to have lost the ability to speak since entering the room.

"I want to discuss the newest case you're working on," Singh finally says. 

"Have you got intel for me?" Len asks, deliberately cruel. Cops hate a snitch as bad as any felon, and the suggestion that Singh's here to tell tales gets the flinch Len was looking for.

He doesn't actually have anything against Captain Singh personally – the guy's a good cop, believe it or not, with good detection skills and better management skills and unlike most of the lot of them, he's not completely in the Family pocket – but Singh's a believer in the blue line, cop solidarity über alles, and until he remembers that his loyalty should be to justice and truth before friendship, Len's not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That's why Singh's here, after all. He's not here to snitch.

He's here to ask Len to _back off_.

More fool he. Len _never_ backs off.

(Len will admit, however, that he's a hypocrite: he's never had any problem valuing friends over laws – his first loyalties are to Lisa, tucked far away with her skates and the college he's paying for, and to Mick. But not at the expense of the corruption of the blue, the goddamn cops who are supposed to be protecting the helpless; that's not a crime against society, which Len could forgive, but a crime against his city, and Len will never forgive that.)

"No," Singh finally says. "Listen, I know this is a long shot –"

"Who?"

"I – what?"

"Who?" Len repeats. "Who do you want me to back off of?"

Singh looks suspicious; good for him. He's not an idiot: he knows a request to back off will only make Len more suspicious.

"I don't want you to back off, exactly," he says. "More – I don't want you wasting your time."

Len arches his eyebrows and waits.

Singh's an experienced cop, veteran of a thousand interrogations and interview rooms, and he knows how silence can be wielded as a weapon.

It's just that Len's better at it, that's all.

"Barry Allen," Singh says, giving up the name. "I don't know how he got on your list –"

"He's never here but his work always gets done," Len says dryly. 

"He's efficient –"

"He's always arriving late, looking like he's been busy somewhere else."

"He's _always_ had an issue with –"

"He disappears at odd times, say, around the same time something is going down."

"There's always something going down –"

"He knows more about crime scenes than he should upon first glance."

"So he's good at his job –"

"He talks about active cases with people outside the precinct."

"We all do to some degree –"

"Brand new set of friends."

"Not exactly a _crime_ –"

"And all of that following nine months disappearance –"

"On medical leave!" Singh bursts out, a vein starting to pulse in his forehead. "He was in a coma!"

"Yes," Len drawls, stretching the word out. "He was, wasn't he? Then he got himself transferred out of the hospital into a private facility – a private facility run by Harrison Wells, aka the genius behind the Accelerator explosion that supposedly caused Allen's little 'accident' – and what do you know? Not only does that place not have proper records as far as I can tell, it appears that, both before and after the explosion, they have only ever had _one_ patient."

Singh is gaping at him.

"Now, I don't know about you," Len says, tilting his head to the side in his most irritating, exaggerated thoughtful way. "But when you put all that together with the fact that a lot of these bad habits are newly developed following that so-called coma of his – except for the punctuality, of course, that's long-standing – you get a _very_ interesting picture. One I intend to look at a bit more closely."

"Goddamnit, Cold, he was _hit by lightning_ ," Singh says through gritted teeth. "Some changes are to be expected. It's a miracle he even got that much of him back –"

"Yeah, about that," Len says and now his teeth are bared. "Funny how his job was still open after nine months."

Singh straightens up like he's just been shocked by lightning himself. 

"Funny, too, how there weren't any concerns regarding his mental state after being hit by lightning," Len continues. "But you know what's the most funny of all?"

Singh is silent.

It's okay, Len wasn't asking that expecting an answer.

Len leans forward. "What I find the most funny, Captain Singh," he says, as conversationally as he can, "is that he says that he was in a coma for nine months, right? Nine months. It's been a little over nine months since the explosion. Nine months, and he's back to work in a week? No bedsores, no muscle atrophy, no deterioration, no physical therapy, no occupational therapy – oh, no, our Mr. Allen apparently leaped out of his hospital bed and went for a goddamn run around Central City, fresh as a daisy. And, in the process, either during the coma or during that run –"

Len flips open the folder on his desk, revealing two photographs. One is Allen before his mysterious nine-month absence; one is after. He's shirtless in both, because Len's contacts sometimes like to snag shirtless pics for him ever since they figured out he was pansexual – something that usually pisses him off, except he wouldn't have figured out the weirdest part of this whole Allen thing if they hadn't so he supposes he has to forgive them.

"– the man picks up a set of abs," Len concludes, his voice flat. "Now, Singh, I know you've given up ogling other people in your marriage vows, but tell me, in view of your past experience in this field, does one generally get that sort of body development _lying in a hospital bed_?!"

That last bit was said with a full on snarl. 

Okay, so Len's a bit touchy on the whole hospital subject. 

Singh's shoulders slump down, an acknowledgment that he doesn't have the answers Len's looking for and that there is no way that Len's dropping this investigation – either into Allen, or, if that pans out, into Singh for enabling him.

And because Len's investigations are typically confidential among the Captain rank at this early stage, if Allen hears so much as a whisper on the subject before Len's ready, Len will know exactly who to blame. 

Len smiles at him. The smile has teeth. 

"Good talk, Singh," he says encouragingly. "Have a nice day, why don't you?"

Singh's lips are pressed together until they're very nearly bloodless with rage, but he's smart enough not to say anything. He knows how dangerous Len is.

He walks out with his shoulders squared, much like someone who wants to punch someone and is very nearly there, but barely refraining.

Len dials a number on his desk before grabbing his crutch and limping heavily over to the door that Singh rather rudely left open, particularly given that he knows that Len prefers a closed door and has difficulty walking to close it.

"Chum in the water, sir?" his assistant asks dryly. Technically, Len ought to have a whole team, and he does, but he's spread the best of them out widely among the precincts of the sprawling Central City. This isn't really 'home base' for him, just an office he can use for the time being – and one at which he’s newly arrived, no less, after he was quietly encouraged to move until the looks of his fellow policemen became a touch less murderous – but that's fine. As long as he can do his job, he's fine. And he can do his job here with just him and his assistant.

(Why did he never consider investing in a personal assistant when he was a criminal? They're _so useful_. He would've saved himself so much angst. His current assistant, Danvers, is the _best_.)

"Not him," Len tells Danvers with a faint grin. "That was just a friendly chat. Come in and take some dictation, will you?"

"You make that sound so awful," she observes. "I should sue for sexual harassment."

"If you're getting sexually harassed, then I'm in a hostile work environment."

"Boss," Danvers says, suppressing a grin. "You _are_ a hostile work environment."

"Kara Danvers," Len groans. "Just get your ass in here already."

She laughs and gets her ass in there with her speed-typing box – she used to be a court reporter before Len snagged her, and she's amazing – just in time for the open phone line Len dialed to start picking up things on the other side.

The other side being the desk immediately adjacent to one Detective Joe West's, who has the dubious honor of being Singh's confidant, Allen's mentor (possibly father?), and one of the poor souls on Len's list, given the remarkable speed by which the open investigation of his recent officer-involved shooting (West being the officer) got resolved. 

Someone should really do something about the security in this place. Len plans on giving them a list before he leaves - but only after he's done exploiting it.

"- don't let Cold get to you, chief," West is saying. "He's got nothing on you."

"That isn't the issue," Singh replies with a sigh. "I don't want him here at all. Investigating my people -"

"When he could be doing something useful with his time," West agrees. "Goddamn parasite."

"Joe," Singh says, mildly censorious. "He's your superior officer."

West snorts. "By cutting in line - yeah, yeah, I'll back off. He did amazing work with the Families, not just here, but everywhere, I'll give him that much. But I don't have to appreciate the fact that the guy's working out his childhood trauma on _us_."

"Joe!" Singh exclaims. "That's uncalled for."

"Oh, come off it," West says with a laugh. "We all know the story - dad was a bad cop and a mean drunk that liked to knock his kids around. And now the - I mean, our very respectable visiting Captain Cold, he's got a vendetta against the boys in blue instead of the guys that really need to be taken off the streets."

"If a cop's done something wrong, they need to be taken off the streets too, Joe," Singh says. "That's what Internal Affairs does. You can't hold it against Cold - I mean, Snart - that he's good at his job."

"Even you call him Cold," West points out. "And that's saying something."

"No, Joe, it isn't," Singh replies, sighing. He sounds tired. If he was tired, he shouldn't have tried to go up against Len. "I'm pretty sure I just called him it to his face, and that's still not saying anything. The man really is good at his job, and he's utterly fearless. We need someone like him rooting out corruption, we really do. But sometimes he goes barking up the wrong damn tree -"

"Someone in our precinct?" West asks, his tone lighting up with interest. 

"That's confidential," Singh snaps, clearly remembering himself. "Damnit, Joe, he'll have _my_ job if you go around blabbing."

"My lips are sealed," West promises, but though he tries to raise the subject of Len a few more times, Singh is having none of it and firmly steers the conversation onto their current investigation. 

After listening for a little longer, Len nods to himself and hangs up the line.

"...did he really call you Captain Cold to your face?" Danvers asks, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

"Cold, anyway," Len says, allowing himself to smirk as she starts giggling. "I think I made him angry."

"Boss," she says, lifting her glasses and wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes. "You make _everyone_ angry. It's practically your _hobby_."

Len grins. She’s not wrong.

But the grin slowly fades as he thinks about the task he’s set for himself.

He’s engineered a few meetings between himself and Allen – usually he sets up the first meet at one of the local Jitters, where he can ‘accidentally’ stumble with his (annoyingly still-necessary) crutch to get people’s attention, and Allen’s no different. 

Well, he was a bit oblivious but it worked _eventually_. Len took the precaution of telling the barista that he was trying to get Allen’s attention, which definitely helped cover his ass stumbling so many times – Kendra thought he was hilarious and adorable and definitely hinted strongly to Allen to pay attention. 

Since then, they’ve been sitting together whenever their coffee runs ‘coincidentally’ match up. 

That’s probably how Singh realized that Len was onto Allen’s case, putting the seating and Len’s high-level sealed reports together. 

The problem, though, is that Allen is…frustrating.

“Thinking about your newest boytoy again?” Danvers asks.

She only looks innocent.

“Target,” Len corrects. “Not boytoy.”

“You’re basically a cat, boss,” she says. “You play with your food and your toys and your targets all the same way.”

“Basically a cat,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “This is what I get, is it? I employ you, you know.”

It’d taken literally months to break Danvers of her annoying habit of being excessively deferential, so she knows he doesn’t mean it.

Her smirk makes that very clear. 

“You didn’t answer the question,” she points out.

“Because you phrased it in a stupid way,” Len grumbles. “But yeah, I was thinking about Allen.”

“What’s the problem, then?” 

“Well, to start off, he’s _extremely_ shady,” Len says. “He’s got to have some secret way in and out of Jitters, because I have literally blinked and he’s slipped out somehow. He’s always whispering about stuff with those new scientist friends of his from STAR Labs, and they’re almost always talking about the latest disaster in town, and that’s usually followed immediately by Allen disappearing for a bit.”

“That doesn’t seem like a problem,” Danvers says. “That sounds like a good lead.”

Len makes a face.

“No?”

“He’s _nice_ ,” Len complains. “I see why everyone here likes him; he’s friendly and acts all well-meaning and he helped an old lady cross the road last week –”

“Oh, I see,” Danvers says, grinning. “You think he’s hot.”

“Of course he’s hot,” Len says. “Lots of people are hot; I’m pansexual. That doesn’t usually distract me from doing my job. Besides, he’s half my age.”

“You exaggerate,” she says. “But putting that aside, you are doing your job, because your job is figuring out if someone is up to something. If even you’re getting good vibes off Allen, then maybe, just maybe, this one time, a cigar is actually just a cigar.”

Len blinks at her.

“Maybe he’s clean,” she clarifies.

Len snorts. “He disappears for nine months, claims he was in a coma, and comes back in the best shape of his life,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “At the minimum that’s going to involve some sort of medical insurance fraud, or possibly unemployment fraud. Plus, by all accounts the guy seems to have a real knack for avoiding confrontation by being a compulsive liar.”

“But?”

“His lab work is good,” Len admits. “I haven’t seen any patterns of him altering evidence in favor of any given party, and the lab boys over at the Feds say the reports are basically done right, though they can’t quite get the centrifuge data to match up.”

“A real enigma, then,” Danvers says. “Your favorite.”

“Danvers.”

“Don’t you _Danvers_ me,” she says, smirking at him. “You should go ask him out on a date.”

“I can’t date a _target_.”

“Go ask him out for a totally platonic dinner, then,” she says. “Do it when you know something’s about to go down – and don’t think I don’t know that just because you’ve been burned doesn’t mean your connections in the underworld are totally gone. That way you can eliminate each possible affiliation.”

“First off, that’s entrapment,” Len says. “Second, there are so many Families alone that we’d have to go on a date every day for a year for that to work. Third, he'd twig onto what I’m doing and deliberately not go to something he’s affiliated with to throw me off the scent. And fourth, even if it wasn’t a bad idea, it’s _not working_. There’s no pattern to any of his disappearances!”

Danvers is sniggering. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted how often he’s been meeting up with Allen.

He glares at her balefully.

“Give me your notes on his movements,” she orders, as if she was the boss. “I’ll get them cross-referenced with all the different types of city events I can find so you can do your pattern-spotting on the outside instead of the inside; if he’s going to some sort of dumb concert series or something, you wouldn’t want to waste your time. In the meantime, you have a date.”

“I’m not seeing Allen again until tomorrow,” Len objects automatically.

Danvers smirks at him like he’s admitted something. “Of course not,” she says. “But it’s an MR day.”

Len nods, glad that she reminded him. How hard it is to remember what day is which is one of the downsides of deliberately randomizing his visits to the clinic in Keystone where Mick is so that no one can track him when he goes there. He’d prefer to go on a regular schedule – Len’s always liked timing things – but it’s his duty to keep Mick safe. Or at least, it’s the very least he can do, after all Mick’s done for him. 

If Len was a good man, he wouldn’t go at all. He’d leave Mick alone. He wouldn’t burden him with Len’s baggage and Len’s job and Len’s everything, not to mention the fact that Len’s enemies are even more numerous now than they were when he and Mick were partners.

The Families want Len’s head on a plate. Many of his old contacts in the underworld know he’s a cop now and hate him for it. The corrupt cops that fear him are gunning for him. Even the clean cops hate him for violating their precious boys-in-blue code. 

Len would be better off being friends with no one at all, and if he was a good man, he would refrain.

But he’s not a good man.

“I’ll go catch a ride,” he says. “Is my pick-up here?”

Danvers wrinkles her nose. “Boss –”

“Oh, good, then Charlie is here.”

“I hate that guy,” she whines. “I don’t care if he’s good at losing people, he’s going to kidnap you and eat you one of these days.”

“You exaggerate,” Len says, shaking his head. “I’ve known Charlie for years –”

“He has priors for cannibalism and attempted cannibalism,” Danvers hisses. “Literal cannibalism.”

“Technically,” Len drawls, “he only has priors for defacing a corpse. Cannibalism isn’t a legal crime, and no one proved he was involved with any killing –”

“If you don’t ring me the second you get to the clinic, I’m going to hunt you down,” Danvers threatens. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Who exactly is the boss here?”

“You, sir,” she says. “Now go and do what I told you to do.”

Len rolls his eyes, but gets up, wincing. His leg and side are really pulling on him today. He uses Mick’s clinic to meet his physical and occupational therapist anyway, which is a good cover for going to visit Mick, but going to PT/OT with an already sore leg is going to suck.

“And when you’re done with that, we can talk about you dating a target,” Danvers adds just as he gets to the door. “It’s actually not against the rules until there’s an official inquiry open.”

“No, Danvers.”

“I’ll book you a table for two at a nice restaurant for Friday,” she says. “It’ll have a pre-paid deposit and you’ll have no choice but to ask him to go or you’ll waste the money.”

“A, you’re abusing your access to my credit card,” Len says. “B, I could always go with someone else, did you think of that?”

“Boss,” Danvers says pityingly. “Mick can’t go, your sister’s out of town, I’m busy that night, and you have _no other friends_.”

…damnit.

“Have fun!”

“Mick wouldn’t bitch me out like this,” Len grumbles.

“I’ve been keeping him up to date on your little investigation via secure-line VPN groupchat,” Danvers says cheerfully. “You wanna bet?”

Len flips her off and limps off towards the waiting car.

Mick would _totally_ mock him over this whole Allen thing.


	2. 2

It's not that Barry's keeping an eye out for the guy or anything, it's just that -

Okay, he's _totally_ keeping an eye out.

Listen, Barry has never had any luck with dating. _Zero_. None. Zilch.

In high school he was so renowned for being a weirdo nerd that he barely even tried. 

College was a giant series of dating catastrophes interspersed with a handful of friends-with-benefits relationships that were fun but not serious. 

After college, if anything, his reputation as a weirdo got even _more_ extreme.

(The supernatural events blog being his first Google hit probably doesn’t help, but how else was he supposed to get submissions to help him gather data on unusual events?)

Yes, he's aware that part of his consistent streak of epic dating fails is his overwhelming love for Iris. A large part of it, even; the people he went out with in an attempt not to think about her were usually able to figure out that he wasn't really present at their dates and dumped him in disgust. 

At the time, he’d figured that his crappy love life was a worthwhile sacrifice to make for that one glorious day in the future that Iris would abruptly realize that Barry was everything she never knew she wanted.

But Iris is with Eddie now.

As in, seriously, in a way that’s different from before.

Barry squelches the thought that Eddie somehow swept in while Barry was asleep (in a coma, no less!) and took his girl, because it's not true: Barry never got up the nerve to ask Iris to be his girl, and there was no guarantee that she would've said yes anyway, and now she's with Eddie.

She's been with Eddie for _months_. 

She’s _happy_ with Eddie.

Happy in a way Barry’s never seen her be happy, a glow that lights her up from the inside every time she talks about Eddie, every time they’re together. It’s quieter, in some way, than she’s been with previous boyfriends, more settled, more secure – it’s not the cheerfulness of a new infatuation, but the foundation-deep _joy_ that comes from a relationship that is just rock solid, built on a basis of mutual respect and love.

And the worst part is that, well, Eddie –

Barry _likes_ Eddie. 

Eddie’s a good guy. He’s friendly and he’s kind and he’s thoughtful and he’s head-over-heels in love with Iris, willing to do everything and anything just to see her happy. In short, he’s exactly the sort of person Barry would want to see dating his best friend, except for the fact that he’d kind of like to be dating her himself.

God, Barry still can't believe he listened to Joe's advice and confessed his feelings to Iris even _after_ he knew all of the above. 

Naturally, of course, with Barry’s luck, Barry managed to pick the worst possible moment for a confession. It seems that, in his advice to Barry to be open and honest with Iris about how Barry felt about her, all those words about how Barry would regret not laying out his feelings at least once to see if she felt the same way, Joe somehow forgot to mention that he was actively in the process of trying to break Eddie and Iris up. 

Joe sometimes forgets details like that.

In all fairness, so does Iris; the West family doesn’t fight often, but when they do, it’s both vicious and ruthless and thoroughly and incredibly unkind to any poor outsider who happens to get caught in the middle of the meat grinder. 

Usually Barry.

He’s way too familiar with the usual way it goes - Iris making a decision Joe doesn't like, Joe pushing back and insisting she change it, Iris getting angry and refusing, Joe actively trying to sabotage the project and/or guilt trip her into not doing it, Iris blowing up at him, and an eventual resolution where either Iris gives in and gives up on the project or she continues onwards and Joe pretends that he never opposed the idea in the first place and sometimes even that it'd actually been his idea all along. 

That's the usual way of things, but sometimes it happens in reverse, too, with Joe making a decision that Iris doesn’t approve of and needing to defend it from Iris’ double-barreled attacks, which also consist of guilt trips and silent treatment and sometimes outright sabotage. In her own way, Iris is just as bull-headed and ruthless as her dad.

Barry loves them both dearly, he has since before they took him in after what happened to his mom and his dad, but the way they fight is easily his least favorite West family trait.

They almost always apologize for putting Barry in the middle of these fights after they’re done – Iris with words and hugs and ice cream, Joe with punches to the shoulder and an offer to buy him his favorite pizza accompanied by the unspoken offer to just forget it ever happened – but for all their apologies, they never exactly stop doing it. 

Well, every family is dysfunctional in its own way. This way just happens to be the West family way. 

So, you know, it’s not like Barry's not used to it. 

Okay, maybe not this _particular_ iteration of it, with Joe trying to order Iris to break up with Eddie, which was an incredibly stupid idea in the first place, and when that didn’t work (obviously), he went off and ordered _Eddie_ to break up with _Iris_ , which was (unsurprisingly) even _less_ successful. And, according to Iris, when that didn’t work, Joe apparently then tried to _sabotage_ their relationship by telling Eddie that he wasn't going to let Eddie do his job as long as he was with Iris because he might get hurt on the job and thus cause Iris pain - thereby subtly positioning Iris to take the blame for any failure of Eddie's career to progress. 

To nobody’s surprise, except maybe Joe's, that didn't work any better than the rest of it had – Eddie just told him off and refused to accept such a ridiculous restriction from his senior partner, and naturally he also told Iris about it, and boy, oh, boy, was Iris unhappy when she found out about that.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, that Barry is _generally_ used to this stuff happening.

He just wishes that he’d known that the argument was ongoing _before_ he decided it was the right time to confess his feelings to Iris.

Because, of course, the second he did, she was instantly convinced that he'd taken Joe's side in trying to destroy her relationship with Eddie. He should have realized it was a bad time, but he'd been so busy with the stuff he’d been doing as the Streak that he'd missed the signs of an argument (both on her and on Joe) and, well, yeah.

Suffice to say his confession didn't go as well as he might've hoped. 

He got shot down, and _hard_.

Brutally, brutally hard. 

And the worst of it is, Iris is probably right, too. 

Not in her (totally unnecessary) implications that he was only confessing now that she finally had a serious relationship with another guy because he was being stupidly possessive (it's not true - he's not Joe!), but in the fact that Barry _was_ wrong to try to interfere.

Eddie's a good guy and he’s good for Iris. 

The fact that Barry would kinda-sorta-maybe-definitely prefer that he was the one making Iris happy isn't the point.

The point is, Iris' relationship isn't _about_ Barry.

The point is -

Okay, the point is that he got shot down and then Iris stormed out of Jitters and then he went to get another drink to soothe his aching heart with sugar and then, in his moment of need, he got hit on by the most beautiful man Barry has ever seen.

Listen, Barry's not really big on the whole sign-from-above "when fate closes a door it opens a window" sort of philosophy, but _wow_.

Barry's not saying that his thus far totally platonic interactions with Len are destiny's consolation prize for nearly fucking up his relationship with Iris (thank god for Caitlin's timely intervention, complete with her totally implausible invention of ‘lightning strike confusion’ and willingness to lie to someone while looking at them straight in the eye, because thanks to that Barry still has a best friend despite - direct quote - 'temporarily imitating an asshole Nice Guy', which, ouch), but, well, if it is, then _hell yes_ Barry is okay with being consoled. 

It doesn't make up for his epic failure with Iris, and the slow death of all those dreams he’s been nursing since he was a kid, of course, and Barry's not even sure he's really interested in a relationship right now, given the Streak stuff, much less a relationship with Len who he’s really only met for fifteen minute intervals while on coffee breaks, but all caveats aside -

Okay, for serious, it’s-Leonard-but-please-call-me-Len is just _so unbelievably hot_.

He’s got these amazing grey-blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut a man and close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair that makes a person want to run their hands over it, and that’s just his _face_ , that’s not even accounting for those broad shoulders and leanly muscled arms and that trim little waist and legs that go on for _days_ , even putting aside the crutch he usually leans on that somehow manages to give the guy a sort of innocent charm that abruptly gets shattered the second he flashes that roguish, mischievous smile of his –

…yeah.

Too long, didn’t read: Len is H-O-T _hot_. 

So, yeah, maybe Barry's _kinda_ keeping an eye out for him every time he goes to Jitters. He's only bumped into Len when he's doing coffee runs alone so far, and he's pretty sure Cisco and Caitlin think he's overstating the sheer hotness factor involved here. He'd love to have an opportunity to point Len out to them now that they're actually here with him for once so they can see that he is 100% not understating the situation here.

Of course, Joe is _also_ meeting them today, since they're discussing one of the new metas on the loose, and if he points Len out to Cisco and Caitlin as "hot coffee guy" then Joe will _also_ see, which - no.

For many, many reasons: no.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, since he doesn't see Len anywhere and when he glances over at his new favorite barista, Kendra, she shakes her head a little to confirm that Len isn't in right now and hasn't been in the last hour. 

It's things like that that have earned her that spot as his favorite.

Also the fact that she whispered to Barry that Len was trying to get his attention, because otherwise Barry might have missed it (lost as he was in his own angst) and that right there would have been a _tragedy_. 

"- you listening, Barry?" 

"Uh, yeah," Barry lies, jerked out of his daydream. "Yeah, totally."

"Uh-huh," Cisco says, but he's grinning. "Sure you were."

Barry rolls his eyes at him. "What _were_ you saying, then?"

"Just that it's nice to have a week free of new metas for once, that's all. Oh, and then I said something about purple spiders from Mars to see if you were paying attention."

Of course he did.

Cisco's so much fun. 

"I wonder if Barry drifting off has anything to do with his abilities," Caitlin muses. "I mean, Barry, you run much faster, and that means your reflexes have to be a lot faster to compensate - maybe you're drifting because you're incorporating information faster..?"

"Oooorrrr maybe I'm just daydreaming," Barry suggests quickly, hoping to stave off another round of testing. Ugh, testing. Though to be fair, he did agree to STAR Labs testing him to try to design ways to help people in exchange for their help with the Streak (what an awful name) stuff...

Of course, other than Caitlin, they've mostly ended up focusing on Speedster (no, that's worse) stuff instead, even Dr. Wells...

On second thought, Barry really hopes "the Flash" will end up sticking as his official superhero name. That sounds pretty cool. Like, comics Flash Gordon kind of cool. 

He _wishes_ he could be as cool as Flash Gordon.

"Hey, Joe!" Cisco says, waving, and Barry looks up with a smile.

A smile that quickly fades when he sees the expression on Joe's face, a familiar mulish expression that comes complete with the figurative thundering storm-clouds over his head. 

(God, it’s a good thing Joe isn’t a meta.)

"Did something happen?" Barry demands immediately. "Is Iris okay?"

"Is it another meta?" Cisco asks. 

"Huh? Oh, yeah, no, don't worry about it," Joe says, waving a hand. "Nothing's up. No new metas, and Iris is fine - though she's still writing that Streak-Flash blog; Barry, didn't I tell you to talk about that with her?"

"I did," Barry says. He has. Both as Barry and as the Streak-now-Flash. "It didn't work."

"Try again," Joe suggests. "I don't want her involved in all this meta business, you know that."

"I know, I know..." 

Maybe Barry could hint to her about how he prefers the new nickname while he's at it. 

Besides, Iris seems a lot more into the Streak (ugh, he _really_ hates that name) than she is into boring old Barry Allen, so maybe he could...

She's still dating Eddie, though. And damnit, Barry _likes_ Eddie. 

It would probably be just as wrong to hit on Iris in his superhero disguise as it would be to do it as Barry. 

Ugh, how did getting superpowers make his life so much _more_ complicated?

"Why do you look so pissy, then, if nothing's happening?" Cisco asks.

Joe levels him with a look. "Pissy?"

"I mean, uh -" Cisco stutters, then gives up and takes refuge in his iced coffee, which he's slurping through a straw. 

"You know what he means, Joe," Barry says. Joe's not really that annoyed at Cisco for the comment, he just likes to tease; it’s just that when Joe’s in a bad mood, it’s hard to tell when he’s teasing. His eyes don’t crinkle up the way they usually do. "If nothing’s going on, what's got you so angry?"

"Even Cisco and I can tell that you're upset about something," Caitlin points out.

"Nah, it's nothing," Joe says, but he settles into his seat and takes a long sip from the coffee Barry set aside for him. "Just the pest problem we’ve got at work."

"We - do?" Barry says, blinking. He hasn't heard anything like that, and usually they post the vermin notices everywhere. He'll have to prepare his lab – being up in the building’s equivalent to the attic makes him even more vulnerable. "Like, are we talking rats or cockroaches or-?"

Joe starts laughing. 

Oh, he was being figurative. 

Thanks, Joe. Barry would never have guessed that, given that the CCPD has gotten fumigated at least twice since Barry started working there. 

At least his mistake put Joe in a better mood.

"No, no," Joe says, wiping his eyes. "Not _that_ type of pest. Well, maybe; I could see my way to calling it a rat problem. Anyway, no, what I meant was, we've got this crazy new IA guy, Captain Cold -"

"Captain Cold?" Cisco asks. "Wow. _Epic_ name."

"What's IA?" Caitlin asks.

"Internal Affairs," Barry supplies. "Also known as Internal Investigations, sometimes. They investigate complaints made against cops."

"Like I said," Joe says, good mood fading. "It’s a rat problem. These guys go after other cops, good cops, and tear them down over one little mistake, leaving us short-handed and thinking more about sticking to every little rule in the book than about doing our jobs when we _should_ all be focused on dealing with the _actual_ bad guys -"

"That's a little unfair," Barry protests, even though he knows from experience that he's never going to win this particular argument. "There _are_ bad cops out there, Joe, you know that. Remember Dibny?"

"Dibny?" Cisco asks.

Barry can feel himself getting angry all over again, which is stupid, because it's been at least a year or two since the whole thing happened, and yet...

"Ralph Dibny was a cop Barry took a dislike to just when he was first starting out," Joe is explaining. "He wasn't really all that good at his job, so Barry never much liked him, and then Barry caught him taking some shortcuts and reacted badly -"

"Joe!" Barry exclaims. "That's _not_ what happened!"

"What did happen, then?" Caitlin asks. 

"Dibny planted evidence," Barry says. The memory of it still makes his hackles go up; he'd been _so_ angry at the time. He still is, actually, but it'd been a brand new type of awful back then. When he'd first joined the force, he'd had such an idealized view of the justice system and of the work cops did in particular: rooting out injustice, stopping crime, finding the truth and freeing the innocently incarcerated, getting bad people off the streets and into rehabilitation programs, the works. 

And then along came Dibny, with his smug smirk and his boasting and lust for glory - 

"He was investigating a murder, a woman that got stabbed," Barry continues. "He thought the husband did it, everyone thought the husband did it, he was a real scumbag, but unfortunately there was no proof that the guy was involved. At least, there was no proof until Dibny found a knife with the husband's fingerprints on it. The second that happened, of course, he was treated like a hero for finally nailing the guy."

"Let me guess," Cisco said. "Not the real knife?"

"I tested it and it didn't match up," Barry confirms. "Different blade, different handle - there was _no way_ it could've been the murder weapon, and the way Dibny went about the whole thing made it clear that it wasn't an innocent accident. He'd planted it deliberately to try to _frame_ the guy –"

“Given Barry’s history with the whole mom and pop stabbing thing, Barry blew up,” Joe says, shaking his head a little. He hadn’t approved at the time; he’d thought Barry was sticking his nose in where it wasn’t needed, that Barry should have left it to IA to handle, if it was handled at all, but Barry had persisted. “He even testified against Dibny.”

“He deserved it,” Barry says firmly.

“But it _did_ mean that a murderer walked free.”

“We never had solid evidence that Reagan killed his wife,” Barry snaps. “That’s the whole _point_. Dibny could have been framing an innocent man based on nothing but his own assumption that the guy was guilty. Whether Regan's a murderer is still unknown, but with Dibny we knew beyond any doubt that he broke the law.” 

That’d been the moment when Barry realized that freeing his dad wasn’t just a matter of finding the Man in Yellow, but also of _proving_ it. The CCPD had assumed that Barry’s dad had killed his mom because it was the easiest assumption, because they'd never believed Barry's stories of the Man in Yellow, but just because it was easy didn’t mean it was _right_.

And, yeah, sure, a few of the cops (most of the cops) had given Barry the cold shoulder for a while until Joe had explained the thing with Barry’s dad, replacing at least some of the glares with looks of sympathy (pity, really), and, yeah, maybe some of the friction he still has with a whole bunch of them might be from that rather than from the whole punctuality thing (and, uh, the bad social skills thing, too) that he usually blames it on, but whatever. 

Barry’s still sure he did the right thing.

“To be fair, we’re doing a bit of law-breaking ourselves,” Cisco points out. “Being a superhero vigilante isn’t exactly legal, you know.”

"It's not the same," Barry says, but he frowns. 

It _is_ different. Isn't it?

“Barry's right. At least we know for sure that the metas we fight against are doing bad things,” Caitlin says. “And it’s not like we can just leave this up to the police: with his powers, Barry’s the only one who can stop them.”

Very true. That helps put Barry's mind at ease. 

“The most important thing is to get these guys off the streets so they’re not hurting anyone else,” Joe agrees. “That's why you guys set up the Accelerator prison, right? To keep them from hurting anyone else? That’s a good thing in my book."

"Yeah," Barry says. "And to rehabilitate them."

Well, they maybe haven’t done all that much of that yet, but they're going to – Dr. Wells said –

"Anyway," Joe says, interrupting Barry's train of thought. "This whole thing’s not really a big deal, but it does mean we all need to walk a little more carefully until this Captain Cold guy –”

“God I love that name,” Cisco mutters.

“– gets tired of his most recent vendetta and moves onto harassing a different precinct.”

“Do you know who he’s after now?” Caitlin asks.

“No clue,” Joe says. “That’s why everyone’s got to be careful; this guy has a rep for being going after _anyone_ who gets on his bad side. Doesn't matter how long you've been with the department or how much good you've done, once you're on his shit list, you're going _down_. He took down fifty guys in one massive sting his very first month in the job -"

“In _one month_?” Cisco exclaims, clearly impressed. “How?”

“Apparently, before he became Head of IA, he’d been working undercover or something,” Joe says with a shrug. “And while he was spying, he took the time to record some shady exchanges while he was doing it - and then turned them all in.”

“What, all at once?”

“Yeah. From what I hear, this guy got his promotion while still in his hospital bed, then checked out AMA the next day to wheel himself into the DA’s office and drop a pile of fully written case folders on their desks, demanding they investigate all of them at the same time –”

“Wait,” Caitlin says, “if he went straight from the hospital to the DA’s office, where’d he get the folders?” 

“That’s not the point. The point is, losing fifty guys at once like that - especially without any consideration as to if there were valid reasons for them to be making those deals - has been _killer_ on everyone’s workload. We’re all going crazy, the streets are under-policed, and does he care? No. He’s nowhere near done yet.”

"Why haven't I heard about this guy?" Barry asks.

Joe gives him a look. 

"...what?"

"That would involve actually being in the office sometime, Bar."

"...oh, right. I've been busy."

"With Streak stuff," Joe agrees.

"With _Flash_ stuff, please, Joe," Barry says, pained.

"Seriously," Cisco agrees. "The Flash is a much better name. Have you hinted about calling yourself the Flash to Iris? Her blog is, like, metahuman gossip central; it could probably popularize it -"

Barry starts nodding before he realizes that Joe is glaring.

"- but obviously that's not going to be an issue because she's totally going to stop writing it any day now because it's way too dangerous?" Cisco adds very quickly.

"Why'd you end that with a question," Joe growls.

"Uh, I mean - I - uh -"

Barry starts laughing, and Joe's stern face dissolves into a wry grin. 

"Don't let him scare you," Barry advises a very relieved looking Cisco. If Joe wasn't here, he'd add that Iris doesn't listen to anyone anyway, but Joe hasn't entirely accepted that yet, and there's no point in starting a real argument. 

Barry prefers to avoid confrontation whenever possible. 

Cisco's phone buzzes.

"Oh, hey, guys, Wells has some news for us," he says, reading the text. "Let's head back to STAR Labs."

They all pack up their stuff and start heading out the door while Barry goes and throws out all the trash (he has no idea how he keeps ending up with all the chores, even when he does them at boring old regular speed). He’s just tossed it and turned to start following them when he sees Len come in through the other door, leaning heavily on his crutch as usual.

Barry hesitates, torn between going over to say hello and finding out what news Wells has for them. If it's something relating to another one of the many dangerous metas they suspect are out there, then he has a moral obligation to put that ahead of personal things. But if it’s just more testing, well...

Len sees him and smiles. Not a big smile; Len doesn't do those, just a little lift of his lips and a crinkling of his eyes that makes him look happy to see Barry, and yowza, Barry keeps forgetting how freaking hot Len is. Rather, he remembers, oh does he remember, it’s just that he keeps convincing himself that no one who smiles at him like that could _possibly_ be that hot, and then he sees Len and nope, the guy really is every bit as hot as he'd thought.

Okay, maybe just a _quick_ chat.

He speed-walks (he doesn't dare go faster than that until he's figured out how not to go lightning every time he tries to run) over to Len.

"Uh, hi," he says. 

Wow. Uncool, Barry.

"Barry," Len says, still smiling that tiny little smile. "You coming or going?"

"Going, unfortunately," Barry says, and means it. "My friends - we've got a thing -"

"I've got a thing myself, so I wouldn’t be able to stick around anyway," Len says. "But while I have you, maybe you can help me resolve a problem."

"Sure, anything," Barry says. 

"I had plans for a business dinner this Friday evening, but the guy in question ended up having to cancel on short notice," Len says, and Barry's heart starts going a mile a minute. "My secretary tells me that the reservations are non-refundable, and rather expensive."

Barry nods mutely. Is Len asking him out?! He's not prepared for this. It's too soon! He hasn't even figured out his position vis-à-vis the Flash and Iris and everything yet?

"Unfortunately, all of my friends are also busy that day," Len continues. "I don't suppose you'd be free to go with me...? Just to get to know each other a bit better, of course; it’s pretty hard to get acquainted via five minute chats over coffee."

"Of course," Barry echoes. So, basically, as friends? He can do friends. He can _totally_ do friends. And from friends...well, he can worry about the rest later. He beams. "Yes, of course. I'd be happy to."

"Excellent," Len drawls, looking pleased. "Meet here and head over around seven? It ain't far, even for me."

"Absolutely!" Barry says, then notices Caitlin lingering by the door, looking for him. "Uh, but for now -"

He lifts a hand in an apologetic wave, and Len dips his head a little, waving back - half "good to see you", half "go on then, I'll catch you another time" - before executing a perfect turn on his crutch to catch the barista just as someone tries to steal his place in line while he's distracted. 

Len is so damn _cool_.

Barry sighs and heads out the door.

"Is that Cool Coffee Guy?" Caitlin, the only one who lingered behind long enough to see their interaction, asks. 

"Yeah," Barry says. "That's him."

" _Nice_."

Barry grins at her. It's good to have friends. "I told you. And it’s Hot Coffee Guy."

Grinning back, she nudges his shoulder a little. "Nuh-uh. That guy might be pretty, but he’s way too cool to be hot. You should go for it."

"Really?" he asks. "Even with the whole, you know, thing?"

"I don't know if you mean your abilities or your crush on Iris, but either way, yes," Caitlin says firmly. She smiles wistfully. "It's important not to let your work become everything to you, no matter how important it is. Ronnie taught me that."

"Don't forget that that lesson applies to you, too," Barry tells her. He's still honored that she chose to share her memories of her late fiancé with him. "C'mon, after we do whatever it is that Wells wants us for today, we'll go out for ice cream, you and me and Cisco." He can't imagine Wells going, no matter how nice the man is. He's a very private person. "How's that sound?"

"Could be nice," Caitlin allows, then smiles mischievously. "But first you have to ask out Cool Coffee Guy. Deal?"

"Deal," Barry says with a smirk. "And now you have no choice but to go get ice cream with us, because Cool Coffee Guy _just_ asked me to go to dinner with him on Friday."

"He did? That's great!"

"Well, as friends," Barry amends.

"Still great," Catilin says, linking arms with him. "Though I'm not sure that _entirely_ counts -"

"Awww, c’mon, Caitlin -"

"But I guess I'll count it anyway," she finishes, smiling. "Now let's catch up with the others."

Barry grins. "In a flash."


	3. 3

"You'll never believe what happened today," Len says, settling into the chair next to Mick's bed. He's panting lightly, trying to regain his breath, and his skin is covered by a sheen of sweat; he was a little late, and he suspects his physical therapist took those two minutes out on him.

Shlomit has no mercy. 

To be fair, mercy isn't what he's paying her for. Little by painful little, Len is getting better. No one can deny it, not even Shlomit, and she's even agreed to let him try out maybe using a more discreet leg brace instead of always using his good friends the crutches.

Fucking bullets. It's been four months already, but the bullet to his leg tore through muscle and nerves at a bad angle and the bullet to his gut nicked his spine in a dangerous fashion, and he maybe - maybe! - went back to work a little too fast and tore up a whole bunch of stuff again. 

So even after all this time, he’s still here.

He can't _wait_ to be up and about and able to move freely again. The new leg brace - accompanied by a back brace to help keep his spine straight - won't give him that, especially since he's only allowed to use it for an hour or two a day in the beginning, but still, it's progress. 

Len is determined to make progress.

(And if that's in part because Len can't quite crush the superstitious hope that the second he no longer needs Shlomit's services, Mick will finally wake up and be the one in need of them? No one needs to know that.)

"No, really," he says to Mick, whose eyes are closed today. Sometimes they're open, and he gargles words without meaning, and hope will seize at Len's heart only to break it all over again when nothing comes of it. The doctors say it's a good sign, a promising sign, that it means there's hope that Mick will wake up out soon, but they've been saying that for a month or more. "Today was, quite literally, _unbelievable_." 

He settles down more comfortably in his chair so that he has a good view of the window. He doesn't look at Mick; not looking makes it easier to pretend that Mick's not actually comatose in a hospital room. That instead he's just lying in bed, too lazy to bother getting up, listening to Len ramble on about whatever-and-nothing as always while rolling his eyes and humoring him with an occasional grunt and a "Sure, boss, whatever you say" or two that Len can imagine so well that sometimes he feels like he can almost hear it.

"Let me start at the very beginning - a very good place to start," he tacks on, unable to help it. Mick likes musicals; Len has no idea where that came from, but Mick took it upon himself to ensure that Len was appropriately educated as to them and now Len keeps dropping references into conversation no matter who he's around - fellow criminals, dangerous gangers, or the Police Commissioner, to name a few semi-recent examples. 

It's embarrassing, is what it is. 

"I had court in the morning,” Len continues, “the last bit of testifying against Cichowski - he's the one I told you about, the cop who was taking bribes from the Families to slow-walk certain investigations so they had a chance to cover up the evidence? Anyway, _that_ was harrowing enough, given that the defense brought in his weeping wife and a whole wall of blue to sit out there in the audience, glaring death at me like that would make me think twice about what I was doing or stutter or something. Didn’t work, of course; I don’t regret testifying for a second. After all, no one made him take those bribes..."

Len's a cold-hearted sonovabitch, he’s the first to admit it (and he's pretty sure his mother would agree with him that Lewis is a total bitch), but the whole experience had still been fairly awful even by his unduly elevated standards. 

The first person to go down for corruption in a given precinct is always the hardest, because the assholes always think their precious blue line will save them right up until the moment it doesn't.

Cichowski had been the first one in this precinct. 

At least Singh’d had the dignity not to show up.

Len'd finished up his testimony in the morning, last one to go before closing arguments because the defense wanted one last try at breaking his story as their last desperate hope of victory. It hadn't worked, of course. And then during the midday break Cichowski's wife somehow got ‘accidentally’ let into the same hallway as Len – accidentally, his crippled ass – and she took advantage of the fact that he moved slowly to come right up to him and start screaming about how he was destroying her husband's life, and her life, and the lives of her little boys, five and three, and didn't he feel any _shame_ about it?

"I didn't make him take bribes just because he couldn't afford to buy that fancy house of yours without 'em," Len pointed out to her. "That was all his own doing."

"Is that what a good man's life is worth to you?" she spit at him. "Sure, he took a few hundred dollars -" Wrong by an extremely large magnitude; Len's seen the figures. "- of course he did, they're the _Families_ , this is _Central_ ; you don't cross the Families, not in this town, but he didn't do anything _that_ wrong -"

"We have proof of him dragging his feet on investigations -" Len started to say, since he didn’t want to get into the issue of the Families. 

Honestly, he doesn’t blame most people for giving in to Family pressure; Central City is what it is and all the clean-up in the world is still just starting to make a dent for the first time in forever. It’s just that he believes that people who are willing to give in to the Families have no business becoming or being or remaining cops. Cichoswki should've turned in his badge the second after he took the first bribe - he could've gone to work in security or something, and Len would've not thought twice about him. 

"So he went slow a few times!" she shouted. "That's not that bad!"

Len isn't exactly proud of how he reacted to that. 

He gave her his best smile filled with bared teeth and his iciest glare, the one he perfected on Family gangsters instead of suburban housewives, and while she was still quailing a bit from that, he asked, "Do you know, Mrs. Cichoswki, that most kidnapping cases are solved in the first twenty-four hours, or not at all?"

"I - what?" 

"You've got about twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours to get a good lead," he repeated. "I mention that only because your husband was _assigned_ several kidnapping cases, during the period he was getting paid off."

"I -"

"You've got two kids, dontcha, Mrs. Cichowski? Five and three, you said. And if you go back to the house where you left 'em today and the babysitter meets you at the door in tears and tells you one of 'em just got snatched by some man in a van, but don't worry, she's called the police, and they say don't you worry, ma'am, they'll be getting _right_ on it - well, Mrs. Cichowski, I guess you'll be just fine if they're just a bit _slow_ getting on it, won't you? Maybe they take an extra couple of days here, couple of free weekends there, that’s no problem by your standards, ain't that right, Mrs. Cichowski? You wouldn't hold it against 'em if they traded a bit of speed and your darling baby's best chance of rescue in exchange for, what'd you call it, a few hundred bucks?"

She was quiet, pale-faced and tight-lipped.

"I mean, maybe it's just that you don't give a fuck as long as it's _other_ people's kids your husband's selling out, but hey, what do I know? Maybe it’s more straightforward – just, y’know, fuck the kid, right? You can always have another, s’long as the money’s good enough," Len added, unable to keep himself from doing it because he's an asshole like that, because he hates corruption so much it overcomes his self-control sometimes, and - and, well, because he's seen all too well the sort of parent a corrupt cop can be. 

Of course, that's when she went for his face, nails extended.

Luckily, the court officer was there nearby and yanked her away before she did any actual damage – or, more accurately, before Len was forced to bash her over the head with his crutch to ensure that she didn’t cause any actual damage. 

He didn’t press charges, of course. No need; the inevitable guilty verdict came down less than twenty minutes later, and he figured that was punishment enough.

Still. 

What a fucking day. 

"So that's how it started," Len tells Mick, shaking his head. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I probably shoulda been a bit more sympathetic about it, her losing the nice safe foundations of her life like that - losing the father of her kids, probably losing the main family income, not to mention Cichowski's pension - fuck it, Mick, you're such a goddamn softy, leave off! I only reacted that way 'cause I'm all but sure she knew what he was up to and couldn’t actually bring herself to care until the consequences started coming home to roost." 

He shakes his head, his eyes closed as he imagines the smirk on Mick's face turning into a mock glare as Len impugns his impartiality and general pretended attitude of apathy towards the world, not that Len's ever really believed in that anyway.

If Mick was really apathetic about it all, he wouldn't be here.

He wouldn't -

No. Len's not thinking about what ifs now. He's not thinking about Mick.

He’s not thinking about Mick’s well-hidden kindness and sympathy, about the way he always pretended to be tough but always checked in to make sure people were doing okay, even people he didn’t know, just because that’s the way he is – or at least, _was_ – 

No.

He’s not thinking about Mick.

He's talking about his day.

"Anyway," Len says, clearing his throat. "That's not even the interesting part, you know? I went back to the office after that -"

And arrived to face a solid wall of angry, hateful eyes. 

That was fine. He’d been expecting that.

" - and, well, I figured I could do with a bit of time outside the office, doing something else."

He remembers seeing Danvers' worried face through that crowd of implacable rage. He waved jauntily at her before he left, calling out cheerfully that he’d be in later because he had another appointment he needed to get to, and she looked relieved that he wasn't going to throw the precinct’s newfound vulnerability back in their faces. 

Maybe on another day he would, but not today. He’s a spiteful asshole, but he’s not dumb enough to incite a full-on riot among armed police.

"Didn't _really_ have all that much to do outside, though," Len says, making a face. "Office filled with pissed off pigs, all of our favorite bars are filled with Family informants ready to tell their masters that they have a good clear shot at me, all our old haunts -" Too empty to go to, without Mick. "- and even Allen was too busy to talk when I swung by Jitters."

Len pauses, imagining Mick's response to that and smiling. He's maybe mentioned Allen a time or twenty. 

Or maybe more. 

And Mick's always been the number one fan of Len's love-life - or, perhaps more accurately, the number one critic of Len's _lack_ thereof.

"Okay, yeah," he says. "You've got me. I like the kid. Doesn't mean I ain't gonna nail him to the ground - not like _that_ , you jackass, get your mind outta the gutter - when I find out what lies he's been cooking up."

He winces a little at that, his smile fading away. It'd been good to see Allen that morning - Allen has an infectious sort of joy about him that's positively catching - but Len is _investigating_ him, not making friends.

And _certainly_ not dating, no matter how attractive Allen is.

That's why he's already regretting their scheduled dinner, at least a little. Yes, it'd be good to get more info from the main source, especially since he'll have a few hours to work on Allen rather than the five-ten-fifteen minute intervals they’ve had so far, but doing the investigation personally like this will only heighten the betrayal when Allen eventually gets dragged away to prison on corruption charges.

Len can see his face now, upset and hurt and angry and shocked and horrified, just like that woman from this morning...

He doesn't want to see that. 

But unluckily for Allen, Len's very good at betrayal - as Mick could testify.

If he ever wakes up, that is.

"Anyway," Len says, putting the Allen question from his mind for now and ignoring the pang at the thought of sweet, smiling Allen stuck in the harshness of Iron Heights. Honestly, Allen has the sort of personality that would probably let him make friends even in there - not that that would help make it any less of a miserable pit to be in - not that the fact that Allen would be sad to be in prison even _matters_ , since if he was there, it’d be because Allen'd chosen to be corrupt in the first place, bringing all the consequences down on his own head. "As I was saying, I didn't have anything better to do, so I ended up ringing a few old buddies of ours - neutrals, all, the sort that'd sell to anyone, even cops, the dirty ratfuckers that they are, but they're all I've got left right now, being as I got outed as a pig myself – and long story short, they got me a heads up about an absolute beaut of a job about to go down on Grand."

He smiles a little at that. One of the biggest perks of being in Internal Affairs is that his mandate generally applies to cops, not criminals. Sure, strictly speaking he ought to be stopping any illegal conduct he sees happening, and of course he won't hesitate to call for back-up if he sees something that'll actually harm people, but a nice clean in-transit robbery conducted by a reputable thief known for covering all the angles and minimizing casualties?

Nah. 

He’ll leave that for the ‘real’ cops to stop, if they can.

Besides, as an IA guy, it's good for Len to know which armored car drivers can be bought. 

"You'd have loved to hate this one," Len assures Mick. "Guy got a decent crew together; had liquid nitrogen portable backpack form to pop the door; pulled out to chase the truck in motorbikes the second the truck passed Friedman, gave the driver a goose to scare him into going faster before coming in for the final hit, then caught him right in that sweet spot between Glenview and Highwood, with all the police over two minutes thirteen seconds away and shouting about it helplessly on their speakers - beautiful. Just beautiful."

Len feels his smile go a bit wicked. "Pity it didn't help them."

He shakes his head, his smile fading back into seriousness. 

"The job was planned out perfectly," he tells Mick. " _Perfectly_ , and you know how rare it is that I say that. Hell, this is the sort of thing I’d’ve put together, back in the day. It should've worked. But - you remember how I told you that Danvers was getting really into this one blog about weird events in Central? How she kept nattering on about some sort of weird 'streak' phenomena and I laughed her off?"

He makes a face. "Turns out I owe her an apology -" 

He'll buy her a super-jumbo box of donuts the way he always does; she’s a sugar fiend. 

"- because the Streak itself showed up to mess the job up."

Mess it up thoroughly, no less. Not only were the crew unable to get their target (a super-sized diamond of all dumb things – who were they even going to fence something like that to, anyhow?), they'd tried to fire at the blur of light and ended up scratching one of the bought-off guards, who promptly got whisked away by the Streak to a nearby hospital (Len'd called and checked – the guy was fine). 

"That got my attention, though," Len says. "How'd a local phenomenon like that know how to stop a crime? Or to take someone to a hospital after they got shot? That's _sentience_ , that's what it is. Thinking. So I got curious and pulled the surveillance tapes. And you'll never guess what I found."

He pulls the laptop out of his bag and flips it open, looking at the image that's still frozen on his screen.

"Looks like our Streak ain't an it. It's a _him_."

A figure barely visible, more a blur than anything else, but with a definitely visible hand, a raised arm, and the outlines of a head. A human being; one moving too fast to be spotted naturally, yes, but a human being regardless. 

A human being who is choosing to fight crime on his own, without authorization, without working with the justice system, without being watched over to keep to the rules.

A vigilante.

In Len's own city.

How _dare_ he.

Len bets this guy was inspired by that shadowy Hood vigilante over in Starling, that hypocritical murderous fuck. Maybe even there was some inspiration from that old time urban legend over in Gotham, the shadow Bat that supposedly stalks the streets at night meting out Gotham-style justice without any restraint, leaving broken bones and concussions and worse in its wake. 

And sure, maybe this one's just starting by messing up crimes in progress, but Len knows far, far too well how quickly things go wrong when someone who views themselves as _enforcing_ the law starts thinking of themselves as being _above_ the law.

He wonders grimly how soon it'll be before the deaths start. Death, served quick as a blink and the perp gone in a flash. Best way to be sure a criminal won’t re-offend or betray you, after all...

( _if you're in, you're in - and if you're out..._ )

Len stares at the image a moment longer, then shakes his head to dispel the memories. He leans over towards the bed to show the image to the still-quiet Mick. Even though he knows it's dumb, the thought of not showing Mick, of not pretending that Mick can actually hear him despite his deep sleep...it's too painful to contemplate.

He puts the laptop away.

"Anyway, I'm having Danvers dig into all the mysterious shit that's been going on in the city recently," Len continues. "She’s real good at that stuff – runs in the family, apparently; she’s got a cousin who’s an investigative journalist, I think? Either way, she’s looking at everything: murders, disappearances, the like. Gonna pull on my underground contacts, too; see if they've heard anything, seen anything. No one ever pays attention to the cardboard brigade."

Len's got no idea who first thought to organize the homeless people in Central City into an information network, setting up a central station where upstanding criminals like Len can go ask a question and have it be spread out all over the city, and, in return for the opportunity or the intel he gets, he pays regularly into a distribution fund that keeps all the homeless in the city (both informants and otherwise) fed and in coats and shoes. 

Len's never been bad enough off to have to join their ranks, but it's been close a time or two, the times when he couldn't access any of his legit money without blowing his cover and he couldn't get enough illegal work in to cover expenses. Mick helped him then, too, just as Len helped him whenever he got kicked out of yet another place for lighting fires...

Don't think about the past. It brings nothing but pain.

He shakes his head and forces himself to continue.

"Now, I know what you're going to ask -" 

If Mick ever wakes up, that is, which he might not. Looks like the future isn't safe to think about either. 

Clearly Len's going to have to embrace living in the now. 

"- and I'm at least 90% sure that he ain't a robot. No, I don't know how he's moving that fast, maybe some sort of super-suit tech or something, but the way he moves, that raised hand like a runner? That’s definitely organic."

Len pauses, frowns, thinks about Mick's response - it'd be snide, of course, and insisting that he hates all of Len's stupid sci-fi shows and movies even though they're no stupider than Mick's own dumb ninja thing, and yet also usually insightful. 

"Could be technorganic, sure," he concedes, caught on an intriguing line of thought. "Like the ones in that film you like ragging on so much, yeah. And if he-she-them-it is like that film, then yeah, it's possible that they're - he's? - communicating with something, or someone, and getting instructions from a distance like a drone...huh. Y’know, if he's corresponding with some sort of main entity - there could be radio transmissions, or over-Internet transmissions using the local WiFi. If I could just figure out another place where the Streak's likely to be, maybe manage to stall him a bit before he runs onwards, I might be able to tap into that communication line. If he's talking with someone, that can't be at super-speed or else it'd be unintelligible on their end."

Len starts to smile. "And it won't be all that hard to set up a place where he'll be, either, assuming he's tapped into the local police radio to hear all about ongoing crimes for him to stop. No – don’t worry, Mick, I’m not gonna go up against a super-speed vigilante blind! I could get some untraceable weapons from that fence, you remember him, Bertolli; he’s always good for some stolen stuff. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a pig now, I’ve got a licensed pea-shooter and everything, but if I use stolen hardware to start, that means that even with the best surveillance in the world, the Streak won’t realize I'm a cop until I’ve laid eyes on him. Of course, before I get to that, I need to get some place that’ll agree to me using it as an ambush point -" 

And best of all, it would be _fun_. That old adrenaline rush of planning and executing a job...sure, hunting vigilantes isn’t _quite_ in IA's bailiwick, but whatever, IA or no IA, he's still a cop. 

Might as well use that fact. 

Len grins at Mick. "Good ideas all," he says happily. "I wouldn't have thought of it without needing to defend myself from you on your usual bullshit. As always, you're a real lifesaver -"

Len's voice catches in his throat.

Lifesaver. 

How true that is.

He breathes in, long and slow and shaky, and exhales it all out again, the way he always does whenever he remembers – as he always remembers – that terrible day when he thought he was going to die, and in the process lost one of the few reasons he had to live. 

Len never even got a chance to tell Mick the truth about himself.

Never told him - anything. 

Never told Mick how much Len appreciated him, never told him that he was Len's best friend, his brother, that he loved him and that he’d always love him no matter what was between them, never told him that Len never meant to hurt him by keeping all those secrets - all those _lies_ \- 

"I asked Allen out," Len says abruptly, desperately casting out for another subject to talk about. He can’t think about that. He _can’t_. "Not on a date, of course; that’d be unethical. Just a dinner to learn more about him. Danvers' idea, she has this stupid idea that I _should_ date him, but just because that's a terrible idea doesn't mean that going to dinner with him isn't a decent one. I've already figured out that he's Doc Allen's kid, you remember, that guy from Iron Heights, the wrongly accused one, but if anything that counts in his favor -"

No, he can't. He can’t do this. He can't stop the thoughts, the feeling of failure, of guilt, of sorrow. 

He leans forward in his chair, exhaling hard, dropping his head into his hands and pressing at his temples like he can keep the thoughts away by physical force. 

"I'm not going to dinner with Allen just because I like him. It's because I don't have anyone else to go with," he admits, his throat sore and tight. "I don't - I don't make friends easy, you know that. Lisa's off living her own life – we still talk, you know, but she’s not – she hasn’t been – it’s _okay_ , really. It’s just I don’t think she’s entirely forgiven me for getting hurt, after all the times I promised her that no matter all the risks I was taking, that I’d be fine. I broke that promise. She’s still pissed, and you know how we Snarts hold a grudge. And, I mean, I like Danvers plenty, she’s a peach, but she’s still an employee, and you -"

Len swallows. It hurts. "Well, you know me. I get too caught up with work without you to kick my ass about it, you know how it is. And this Allen kid -"

He scrubs at his face. If he were anyone else, he'd say his eyes were getting wet, but he's him, so they're not. 

"He's nice," he says. "He's - he's _fun_ , for what little I know of him. Really fun, not the put-on-a-charming-face fun that I put on for marks. And I know you'd be telling me I ought to drop the work inquiry, just let it go, focus on the real bad guys and date the one that's just a maybe-criminal because lord knows it's hard to find someone who meets my ridiculous standards, I know that's what you'd be telling me, but - I can't. I _can't_. He disappeared for _nine months_ , Mick. Nine months unaccounted for -"

Len's hands are trembling.

"Nine months in a coma, supposedly," he says bleakly, staring at his hands, watching them shake uncontrollably. The tools of his trade, when he was a criminal, his most prized possession, and now look at them. His dad would’ve called the whole thing a disgrace. "And that's the problem, ain't it? Nine months. You’re almost halfway there already. It’ll be nine months soon enough. Nine months in a coma...that's how I know he's _got_ to be corrupt. That he’s got to be hiding something. ‘cause the docs have told me all about what I ought to expect when - _if_ \- you wake up, and exactly none of it is running around the city with a brand new set of abs in the best physical shape of your life."

Len closes his eyes. 

"He's got to be corrupt," he repeats, even though every time he's met Allen in person his instincts scream at him that Allen's not, that Allen's sincere, that Allen's one of those rarest of rare creatures, the honest policeman. CSI, whatever. The good man. Just like old Doc Allen, back in prison, the way Len had taken one look at him and known that the guy hadn’t murdered his wife, he really hadn't, no matter what the accusation said, and the only reason he isn’t still appealing his unfair sentence is because he’s given up. Just like Len's always known that Mick’s a good man, too, underneath the violence and the pyromania; the way Len knows down to his bones that Mick’s the best man he’s ever met or will ever meet. "You don't understand, Mick, he's _got_ to be. There's no choice in it for me. Because if he ain't corrupt - if he's telling the truth -"

He looks at Mick, forces himself to look at Mick as he is right now, not as Len likes to imagine him to be, but the way he really is: lying there like a lump, still and unresponsive, his muscle mass slowly starting to fade away and atrophy despite the best efforts of medical science, connected to a dozen wires and other machines that stand imposing and silent and are the only things keeping him alive now that his body has decided it doesn't want to do the work itself. Burns everywhere, even after the skin grafts; snarls of raised white scar tissue and shiny angry red marks instead of flesh, still healing so very slowly all these months later. 

The damage done – to the muscle, to the nerves, to the bone, to the heart, the lungs, all of his insides – damage that would take _years_ to fully recover from, even by the best possible estimate –

"If he's telling the truth," Len says, refusing to tear his eyes away. Forcing himself to look at what he’s done. "If he's telling the truth, then I might start hoping for a miracle again. And I _can't_ , Mick. Not another disappointment. Not another heartbreak. Not another hope for me to make an ass out of myself over, just for the meagerest chance that you might wake up and be yourself again, just like before. I – I can't go through that again, Mick. I can’t. And that's a shitty reason to go after someone, I know it is, even if he probably _is_ corrupt, but - I've got to do this. I have to _know_. You know how obsessive I get when I've got my teeth in something."

Mick doesn't respond, because he's not actually listening. He's in a coma. A coma Len's responsible for. 

"I've been eating badly, without you," Len tells him. "The way I always do. You'd be pissed at me for letting myself go this way."

Nothing. 

As always, nothing.

"Please," he says, and Leonard Snart never says please to anyone. He never begs anyone for anything, not even for his very life, but he's begging now. "Please, Mick. Even if it's to yell at me about my diet or to make fun of me for my crush on Allen, I don't care. I don't - I won't even care if you hate me for being a pig when you wake up, or if you think I betrayed you, or if you never want to see me again, just as long as I know that you're okay. Just - please."

Len buries his face in his hands. 

He doesn’t cry – he can’t; his father beat it out of him years ago. But somehow his shoulders keep shaking.

"Please wake up."


	4. 4

"Who the hell even _is_ this guy?!" Cisco exclaims.

"I'm telling you, I don't know," Barry says miserably, holding out an arm for Caitlin to defrost.

Yes, _defrost_. 

Because his newest supervillain is apparently _ice themed_. 

Sorry, _cold_ themed. 

An important distinction, apparently. 

"Start from the beginning. We need to go over all of this again," Dr. Wells says, folding his hands together. He looks strangely upset - he's hiding it, of course, he always does, but where before he's genuinely looked mildly concerned but calm and level whenever they went up against a supervillain meta, this time he looks like someone gave him a nasty and unexpected shock.

Barry's not sure why. After all, this isn't the first bad guy to kick his ass in the first round. 

First one to kick his ass twice, though. 

First one to escape.

First one to -

Well.

Maybe Wells is right, and Barry should start from the beginning. 

It starts, he thinks, with the diamond heist. He hadn't _realized_ it was a diamond heist yet, of course - he and Cisco were just fooling around on the police band scanner when they heard a distress call about a robbery in progress come in from an armored car, and of course Barry went to go stop it.

The original plan was to stop the robbery and turn the robbers in, but one of the guards got shot and screamed like a banshee getting gutted, so Barry prioritized getting him to a hospital.

Turns out it was just a scratch.

Well, better safe than sorry.

Anyway, at the very least Barry did manage to pull the mask off one of the robbers, so he went to Joe to checks the guy’s records. The robber in question turned out to be a guy named Tommy D'Angelo, nicknamed the Iceman for his fondness for stealing diamonds. 

(The second Barry heard that, he immediately made an Iceman Cometh joke that got Joe to look at him disapprovingly. One day, Barry will meet someone who’ll properly appreciate his endless encyclopedic memory of dumb references…)

"He's good at what he does, this guy," Joe observes, frowning at the picture Barry showed him. "Very professional - you think he's a meta?"

"We haven't seen any evidence of that yet," Barry replies with a shrug. "Just a regular robbery. Nickname like that, though? It wouldn't surprise me."

He laughs. 

"Yeah," Joe says vaguely, sounding distracted. "Well, good luck with that. Tell me if you need me for anything."

"Something up, Joe?" Barry asks. Normally Joe pays more attention to Barry’s dangerous Flash stuff, especially against a criminal Joe thinks is ‘good at what he does.’ 

Joe makes a face. "Yeah, sorry. Nothing to worry about, just Captain Cold strikes again."

"What do you mean?"

Joe grimaces again, shaking his head. "It was less than three hours after he brought Cichowski down before the DA announced that they’re bringing charges on three _more_ guys based on his evidence."

"Cichowski?" Barry asks, frowning and trying to remember. He's pretty sure he knows the name, but can't place it to a face.

"One of the old timers," Joe replies. "I don’t think you know him that well; he worked over in the other side of investigations."

"Oh, right," Barry says, remembering. They'd only worked together on a crime scene a few times; he has a vague memory of someone fairly easy-going about Barry's whole punctuality problem, but nothing more specific than that. "Wait, he was corrupt?"

"Captain Cold certainly decided he was, I guess," Joe says with a scowl. "I mean, maybe he was, I don't know, I wasn't paying that much attention to his trial - mostly because I've been too goddamn busy picking up all this extra slack! But with him gone, the rest of us have to take on his caseload, too, as if we weren't already overloaded - and now with three more guys are being put on unpaid admin leave until the charges against 'em get resolved, that means we've got _even more_ to do! And we all have to do it while watching our asses every damn step of the way, in case Cold decides to round up someone forgetting to file exactly the right piece of paperwork at the right time..."

"You _should_ be doing your paperwork on time," Barry says automatically, guiltily thinking about the pile he himself has upstairs. He'd done it pretty thoroughly at first, but since no one ever seemed to really pay that much attention to when exactly the paperwork was filed, and everyone else left it to the very last minute and filled it out retrospectively, it'd been so easy to get into bad habits - habits that persist even though he has super-speed now. He resolves to do better. 

It really is important to do it on time. Not just for administrative purposes – whether you filled out the request for a warrant or not could be the difference between a legal search and an illegal one. 

“Pot, kettle, black,” Joe says, sure enough. “Hey, maybe you can help me with the –”

“Important Flash stuff to do,” Barry says hastily. He hates paperwork and there is zero chance that he’ll agree to do any more of it than he already has to. Though he doesn’t hate it as much as Joe does, which probably explains why he’s so annoyed about everything happening. Joe's a good guy who'd never abide corruption, especially Family-inspired corruption, but all of this stuff has him drowning in an ocean of work even before the realization that he now has to be even more careful about dotting his "i"s and crossing his "t"s. Still, if the cops who got charged – and cops almost never get charged, so there must be a ton of evidence in play for the DAs to go public with it the way Joe is describing – if they really _were_ corrupt, surely everyone having to be a little careful about doing their paperwork right is a reasonable price to pay...? "Anyway, I'll leave you to it and we'll touch base when this whole Iceman thing is done, okay?"

"You're assuming he's going to show up again," Joe says dryly. "Bar, I know you're used to dealing with metas now, but this guy's a professional. Odds are he's just going to call it a bad job and disappear into the woodwork."

Barry shrugs. "We'll just have to hope that the Kandahq Dynasty Diamond is too much of a lure for him to give up. Can you tell the museum to keep an eye out for the guy?"

"Yeah, sure," Joe says. "We'll station a few guys nearby. I’ll try to get myself assigned a spot if I can and play interference with Eddie if necessary. Won’t be as many people there to back you up as I'd like there to be, but like I said, we're stretched thin."

"Gotcha. No worries. Later, Joe.”

"Later - oh, Barry!"

Barry pauses and looks at him.

"Be careful going after this Iceman guy, will you?" Joe looks serious. "We don't know who Cold might be going after next - and you've got things to hide."

"Don't worry," Barry tells him. "I'll be careful. Besides, like you said, odds are this Iceman guy gives up, right?"

Barry doesn't really think he will, though, and Cisco and Caitlin both agree with him, making a point of keeping a tight watch over the police scanner.

Sure enough, when it starts getting into the late afternoon, there's an alert from the museum - the curator calls in to report someone having taken the intro tour twice, which Barry immediately realizes is super weird (the way any good Central City boy would - that museum tour is notoriously the _worst_ ). 

The police that Joe got stationed nearby come to check it out and spot D'Angelo hovering around almost at once. The second he spots them, though, he bolts, leaving the police far behind.

"Sounds like you're up, Barry," Cisco crows. "Round two, going up against the Iceman!"

"Sounds like one of your nicknames, Cisco," Caitlin teases as Barry runs into his Flash outfit and starts to head out.

"Pssh, really? _Iceman_? I could do _so_ much better -"

Still grinning, Barry is at the intersection next to the museum in a flash. He immediately starts looking around for D'Angelo, trying to figure out where he went.

It takes a less than a minute to spot the guy - he's running into a crowded theater where everyone is already spilling out the doors.

"He could be going for hostages, Barry; be careful," Caitlin warns. 

Barry nods and runs in after D'Angelo.

The Iceman must not be in great shape, because he only makes it as far as the main corridor of one of the now-empty theater wells before he stops, his hands on his knees, panting hard. Barry runs straight up to him with a cocky grin spreading on his face, thinking that nabbing this guy is going to be a cinch. 

At that point, three things happen approximately at once.

First, Barry abruptly notices that the number of people exiting the theater all at once isn't because a bunch of movies just let out, but rather because someone pulled the fire alarm.

Two, it occurs to him that D'Angelo is standing right in the middle of a deserted theater well, which is basically the most obvious possible place that someone suspicious could go stand and wait if a fire alarm’s been pulled, and also that D'Angelo is probably not as stupid as all that.

Three, he's abruptly hit in the side by what can only be described as a rhino made out of freezing cold ice. 

Or, rather, by a blast from some sort of cold-blast-producing gun, which he figures out when he catches himself from staggering backwards and looks over at the guy who's casually reclining on one of the theater seats and smirking at Barry.

The man is dressed all in black except for a deep blue parka with an incongruously fuzzy hood pulled up over his head. He's got what must be the gun the cold beam came from on his lap, its muzzle still buzzing with a triangle of bright blue sparks; he’s pointing the gun straight at Barry, just sitting there, casually, with his legs crossed like he's out on a pleasure jaunt. 

He's also wearing a mask. 

It's a better mask than Barry's, too: a full-face mask with only sculpted curves to show where the nose and mouth and eyes ought to be, all reflective silver like a mirror, concealing everything about this guy’s features from his forehead to his chin. Even the holes for his eyes are covered with glittering silver lenses.

It should look silly, but it actually ends up looking kind of terrifying. Barry can't see anything about the guy that would help him identify him later: no eyes, no jawline, and even his hair color is concealed by the parka. 

It doesn't help that Barry's having some trouble making his legs and arm, the parts of him hit by the freeze ray or whatever it is, start working again, which is definitely new. His super-healing _should_ have fixed the damage by now, but for some reason, he's grounded.

Not good.

"Holy crap, that actually worked," D'Angelo exclaims. He's not panting anymore.

Barry's getting the distinct idea that he never was, not really.

"Of course it worked," the masked man drawls, his voice echoing strangely behind the mask. Makes sense, given that there’s no opening for a mouth, but still kind of creepy. "I planned it, didn't I?"

Wow. What an egotistical dick.

Barry wishes he didn't secretly find that sort of confidence kind of attractive. Now is _not_ the time for Barry's weird thing about people being arrogant regarding things they're actually good at. 

"Barry!" Cisco hisses in Barry's ear. His voice is distant and tinny. "What's going on? I've lost half of the suit's monitors - are you okay?"

"Are you hurt?" Caitlin asks. "We can't tell from here!"

"I can't believe you made me go on that goddamn tour twice," D'Angelo is saying to the masked man. “I nearly shot myself out of sheer boredom.”

"It got the police’s attention, and the so-called Streak’s, too, didn't it?" the masked man points out, somehow managing to look amused and superior through body language alone. "Everyone in Central City knows that no one goes on that tour twice. Ever. Not even to case the place." He tilts his head, almost like an inquisitive sort of bird. "Did you get the cow story?"

Barry can't help a snort. Everyone always gets the cow story. That's a good 50% of why the tour is so nightmarish.

"He speaks!" the masked man says mockingly. "And that’s very interesting, thank you."

"What's interesting?" D'Angelo asks. "He didn't say shit."

"He knows about the cow story," the masked man says, sounding mildly long-suffering. "That means he was raised in Central. That, or he's a masochist."

"The cow story is not a consensual form of pain for anyone, no matter how masochistic," Barry says, remembering at the last minute to vibrate his voice in order to disguise it. His powers are coming back; good. 

"See?" the masked man says. "Central."

"Whatever," D'Angelo says with a sneer. "Getting him this far's all you paid me for, so I'm out of here. Good luck with your little 'plan', asshole."

He storms out. 

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out," the masked man murmurs, sounding entirely unperturbed by his partner’s (?) departure.

He reaches over to the seat next to him and fiddles with a little box he has there. It looks like a radio or something.

"Barry, what's going on?" Wells demands. 

"Not now," Barry hisses, feeling his legs again and using the opportunity to steady himself back into battle-ready position. He looks at the masked man. "Who are you?" he demands. "And what do you want?"

"I think that's my line," the masked man drawls. "Streak. Or do you have another little nickname you and your friends prefer to use?"

Barry goes stiff. "What do you know about my friends?"

"Nothing," the man says, "other than the fact that you just confirmed that you have them."

"He's playing you, Mr. Allen," Wells says. "You need to retreat before he shoots you again."

Barry takes a step back.

"No need to leave so soon," the masked man purrs, his voice still distorted by his mask. "We have so much to talk about - a talk I'm sure you wouldn't want me to be having with anyone else -"

His hand is still on the cold gun.

Given what it did to Barry, with his super-healing, Barry's pretty sure it would kill a normal person.

Is that what this guy is getting at? Is it a threat, albeit a very oblique one?

"So, tell me, Streak -" the masked man starts to say, but he doesn’t get further.

Cisco cuts in then, shouting, "Barry, you need to get out of there! There's police gathering at the exits - they'll be able to get the guy, but if you don't go now, they'll see you!"

Barry takes one last look at the masked man, who's sitting there, smirking, still speaking.

"He's got something planned," Wells says harshly. "It's a trick. Run!"

Barry runs.

He doesn't think he's given anything away, but somehow the masked man figures out what Barry's going to do a split second before he does it, and acts without hesitation. The cold blast from his gun hits Barry straight in the back, slowing him down, but Barry forces himself to keep going. 

When Barry finally makes it back to STAR Labs, he's mostly defrosted naturally from the speed and the friction, but he's still deeply disturbed. 

"There was a guy there," he reports. "Not a meta - he had some sort of gun -"

"A cold gun," Cisco says, looking sick.

"Yeah," Barry says. "How'd you know?"

"Because I built it."

"What?"

Cisco is full of explanations, apologies, stuttered confessions of how before he’d gotten a chance to really know Barry, he’d been afraid of what Barry was capable of – how he’d figured out that cold was the antithesis of speed and built a gun accordingly – how the gun had been stolen from STAR Labs sometime when he wasn’t looking -

Wells is incandescently angry, and Barry’s not that far behind, more than a little hurt and pissed off about it. How could Cisco think that..? And design a weapon aimed just at him, too!

"It's not like anyone died," he points out, trying to be fair. They can still defeat this guy and get the gun back.

"Still, they could have," Caitlin says. "Pulling a fire alarm at a theater - "

"That's not the point," Wells says harshly. "The only reason there wasn't any collateral damage was because this mystery man was targeting Mr. Allen specifically. Who know what further steps he might take to try to lure Mr. Allen in again, now that his first attempt has failed? Who knows how many people might get hurt the next time around because Mr. Allen couldn’t stop him this time?"

"The police will have gotten to him by now," Barry protests, taken aback by this unexpected attack. If anything, Wells’ criticism hurts more than Cisco’s invention of the gun – it’s not like Barry didn’t try his best to stop the masked man! "He can't hurt anyone when he's in custody, and we can use that to find out who he is."

"I can hack into the police lines -" Cisco starts to offer.

"No need," Barry interrupts, cutting him off. He's still sore about the cold gun, both literally and figuratively. "I know someone who can handle it."

It’s a good thing Felicity is in town for another visit after her first visit got cut short. Barry runs over to her hotel; it turns out that she can, in fact, handle hacking into the CCPD on her laptop, no problem and barely any questions asked, but she can't make something out of nothing, and nothing is exactly what she finds.

"What do you mean, they didn't make any arrests?!" Barry exclaims. "But there was this guy in a mask - he had a gun -"

"I don't know, Barry," Felicity says, shrugging helplessly. "But they didn’t. There's got to be another way of tracking him down, though. Maybe he'll make another try at the diamond?"

She also has a lot to say about Cisco trying his best and building trust, but Barry's less interested in that and more interested in running around the city looking for the masked man, even if Cisco does call him back a few hours later, evening having turned into night, claiming to have come up with a way of tracking the cold gun and directing Barry straight back onto the path of his newest supervillain. 

The cold gun’s signature is at the train station.

"Why would he be leaving town already?" Barry demands, wondering secretly if maybe he should let the guy go.

"Because he got what he wanted," Felicity says grimly. She’s at STAR Labs with Cisco now, apparently. "I just checked the security cameras at the museum; there's no diamond in the display case."

Barry tries to run faster. 

"Barry -" Cisco starts. "I just wanted to say -"

"Not now," Barry snaps, and turns off the comms. He's got a bad guy to focus on.

The masked supervillain is sitting in one of the deserted waiting areas, watching the last train to depart pull away from the station and start to gather speed. His cold gun is glowing blue by his side. 

Barry comes to a stop a cautious distance away.

"Well, look at that," the masked man - Cisco seriously needs to give him a name already, because angry as Barry is at Cisco, he's also getting tired of fighting someone when he has no idea what to call him even in his head - says when he sees Barry. "You're just full of interesting tricks today, Streak."

"And you've got another thing coming if you think I'm going to let you escape," Barry says. 

"What, leave? My own city? Never." The guy even has the gall to put his hand on his chest, pretending to be offended. 

What an _asshole_.

"It's not your city anymore," Barry shoots back. He likes bantering with his villains, but he's wary here: this guy is way too calm. 

Even if he hadn't turned off his comms, he wouldn't need Wells' whisper in his ear to realize that this has go to be a trap of some sort. 

"Even putting aside the fact that you wouldn't really be able to stop me from doing just as I want, I’d be interested in exactly whose city you _do_ think this is, Steak -" the masked man suddenly cuts off and starts to rise from his seat. "The train!"

Barry would normally assume it's just a "made you look" moment that he's - okay, that he's rather notorious for falling for, but he figures he's fast enough to steal a glance. 

And it's a good thing he does - the train is derailing. 

No!

Barry runs, desperation pushing him faster than he's ever gone before. He zips through the train from the front to the back, pulling people off each car even as the effects of the crash begin to pulse through the train.

Even as he does, though, he knows he's falling straight into the supervillain's diabolical trap. Sitting there in an empty train station, watching the last train leave, and then the last train derails? 

Of _course_ Barry would choose to save the people on the train, just like he chose to save the guard at the diamond heist, and that would leave the door open for the villain's easy escape with the diamond.

Barry has to admit that it’s a great plan, in a sick sort of way. You just have to be willing to risk the lives of all those innocent people. 

But what can Barry do? Escape or no escape, Barry can't let these people die.

He pulls the last one off and comes to a skidding stop on the near side of the crash. The train is totaled, but at least he prevented anyone from dying -

The blast of cold hits him right in the back.

It's worse this time, stronger, and he falls, twisting forward as the cold beam hits his legs and freezes him to the ground.

It's the masked man. 

"How dare you," the man snarls. 

"How dare -" Barry starts, utterly confounded and not a little bit enraged. Who the hell does this guy think he is, yelling at _Barry_? "What?! What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I bet you think you'll get a medal for this," the masked man sneers. "'Steak Saves Train' - or rather, the people _on_ the train, since the train itself is scrap. Is that what you were thinking?"

"I did save the people on the train!" Barry protests. He doesn't understand - why didn't the masked man take his chance to escape? Wasn’t that the point? And why does he seem so angry all of a sudden?

"Makes a man wonder how many of your own stunts you've had planned out in advance," the masked man says. He steps forward towards Barry, his cold gun up at ready - his gait is very strange, his shoulders hunched over and his leg swerving outward like he can't unstraighten it, a lurching stagger that somehow manages to be no less intimidating than a smooth stride would be. "Easy enough to be the hero that way, isn't it?"

Wait - is he saying -

"Are you accusing _me_ of setting up the train to derail?!" Barry exclaims. "Just so I could take credit for rescuing them?!"

"Why not?" the masked man shoots back. 

"First off, I don't take credit for anything I do! The biggest news about me is on a blog!" Run by Iris, no less, which Barry still can't believe. All those journalism classes, and she fixates on the one thing he doesn't want her to...

"Starting rumors," the masked man counters. "Laying the base for a big debut - like, say, this one."

"I don't _want_ a debut!" Barry exclaims. "And anyway, you already know that I didn't derail the train - _you_ did!"

" _Me_?!"

"Yes, you!" Barry shouts. "It was your escape plan, wasn't it? Get the diamond, go to the train depot, then use my distraction from the train derailing to escape -"

"I have no intention of _escaping_ ," the masked man says scornfully. "Least of all from you, kid."

"To take the opportunity to shoot me in the back, then!"

"I shot you in the back because I thought you'd endangered the lives of dozens of people," the masked man snaps. "Are you saying you had nothing to do with the train?"

"Of course I had nothing to do with - wait, are you saying _you_ had nothing to do with it?"

"Streak, if I wanted to escape you, I'd just turn off the sensors on my gun," the masked man says dryly. "You know, the ones you used to track me here?"

...crap, that _is_ how they tracked him. A weakness in the gun this guy already apparently knew enough about to exploit.

"But then why were you in the empty onboarding area if you hadn't deliberately missed the train?" Barry demands.

"Because the waiting area at a train station right after a train leaves is guaranteed to be deserted, obviously," the masked man says. "And I didn't want collateral damage if you decided you wanted a fight - do you know how hard it is to find a deserted place in this city?"

...huh. 

The guy's not _wrong_. 

"Besides," the masked man continues, "I'm not the criminal here."

Wait.

_What?!_

"Of course you are! You - you stole the Kandahq Dynasty Diamond!"

"Don't be ridiculous," the masked man says. 

"It wasn't in its case! And you have that fancy gun!"

"The case made out of glass," the masked man says, unimpressed. "Which someone could probably break with a heavy wrench if they wanted. Wouldn’t have even needed this gun if I’d actually wanted to take it."

Uh.

That’s…a surprisingly good point.

"The museum was advised to put the diamond back in the safe at night until the threat of theft had passed," the masked man says. "As far as I know, it’s in their store room now."

Barry reaches up to his ear.

"- so sorry, Barry!" Felicity is saying on the comms. "I didn't even think check the store room - he's right, it's in there - I can't believe I didn't run a multi-level, collusive search algorithm to double-check -"

"...oh," Barry says, starting to feel stupid. Okay, yes, he can maybe kinda sorta see how his appearance, plus his comments about not letting the man escape, could be misconstrued into a threat about the train. "But, the theater - you were laying a trap for me!"

"Yes," the masked man says patiently. "Because you're a vigilante taking justice into his own hands. Which is illegal."

Barry gapes at him.

"Oh come _on_ ," the masked man says. "You must know that it's illegal. Why would you be wearing a mask if you're not perfectly aware that you're committing a crime?"

Of all the ridiculous bullshit -

"You're wearing a mask yourself! Right now!" Barry exclaims. "What's _your_ reason?"

The masked man shrugs, pulling off nonchalant in a way Barry would love to be able to do. "Oh, I wouldn't, normally," he drawls. "Wasn't even planning on it, but my secretary insisted I take it. I've got a lot of enemies just waiting for me to make myself vulnerable, so she told me that I wasn’t allowed out without one. Wouldn't let up on it until I agreed."

"Are you _kidding_ me?!" Cisco hisses in Barry's ear, and Barry's got to agree with him.

He's met metas who can duplicate themselves and turn into bombs and he himself can run faster than most people can see, and this is still one of the most ridiculous things he's ever heard. 

"You have a secretary?" Barry yelps. " _You_?!"

The masked man puts a hand to his heart again. "Now, now, Streak. I'm offended. Why wouldn't I have a secretary?"

"Because you're a supervillain!"

"Listen, even when I was working as a full-time thief, I would've benefitted from a secretary. A good secretary is worth more than gold - or diamonds, for that matter." The masked man is apparently one-hundred-percent serious. Also apparently some sort of thief-turned-supervillain? "You should look into getting one sometime. It'll make your life so much easier; you won't even know how you did without them."

"Uh, thanks?" Barry says, because what the hell is happening right now. Is he really being given a hard sell on getting a _secretary_? 

"Wow," Felicity says in his ear. "This is like totally how I would imagine those terrible multi-level-marketing Tupperware parties go, but for, like, executive management, maybe? You know what I mean?"

Barry kind of does, but only because Iris was a viciously competitive girl scout who recruited other girls in her own multi-level marketing scheme in her bid to be the most successful girl scout cookie seller in her district. 

"Now to get back to the point," the masked man says. "You're going to stop."

"Stop - what?" Barry asks, dazed.

"This," the masked man says, gesturing around vaguely. "Vigilantism."

"I can't stop!" Barry exclaims. "There are dangerous people - someone needs to stop them -"

"Yes," the masked man says. "The _police_. Ever heard of them?"

Barry cannot believe this is happening. He’s getting lectured on crime-fighting by a freaking supervillain! "You don't understand."

"Oh, I understand just fine," the masked man says. "You've appointed yourself an enforcer of the law, but you think you're above the law. Just like the Families do. Just like corrupt cops do. Well, I won't have it, not in my city."

Barry's starting to get angry now. He puts his life on the line every day to protect people from crazy metahumans, which this guy knows exactly zilch about, and this guy is acting all high and mighty like he thinks _Barry's_ the supervillain?!

"I'm doing good," he says stubbornly, forcing himself to sit up. "I'm saving people's lives."

"For now," the masked man says. "These things always escalate. _Always_. There's always an easier path to take. And I'm here to remind you that you're not above the law, even if it means I have to -"

"Drop your weapon!" a familiar voice shouts.

Barry and the masked man both turn. 

It's Cisco, and Caitlin, and Felicity, and they've got a giant glowing gun in their hands.

"Well, well, well; these must be the friends you were chatting with earlier," the masked man says. "Are we having a party?"

"The only party we're having is one where you're not welcome," Felicity says. "So it's time for you to beat it."

"And why would I do that?"

"This is a new prototype cold gun," Cisco boasts. "Four times the power. So if you don't back off now, you're going popsicle."

The masked man stares at him for a long moment, then glances at Barry. "Are _any_ of you familiar with the law? At – at all? Specifically the part about threats regarding bodily harm and murder being a crime?"

Barry forces himself to sit up, even though the ice hurts. "Says the guy who shot me up with ice."

"Oh, get off it; you’re clearly getting over it already. Also, as it happens," the masked man says, "I'm allowed to do that."

"Of all the hypocritical -" Cisco starts. 

"Put your weapons down and your hands up!" someone shouts from a distance. 

This voice is also familiar.

_Eddie_.

Joe's partner, and someone who is very much _not_ in on the whole Flash thing yet. Joe managed to get his patrol assigned to the train station area once Cisco got him the update about where the masked man was, but he was _supposed_ to be keeping Eddie back in check so that they could serve as backup in case things went downhill with the masked man.

For Eddie to be here, interfering, before they called for help – something's gone wrong.

Barry tenses.

"I guess it _is_ time to go," the masked man says, watching Barry. "Wouldn't want this to escalate any further, after all - at least not until I've got proper backup. Be seeing you, Streak. And remember - I'm watching you."

With that, the masked man turns and starts limping off towards the train platform.

Barry shares a bewildered look with Cisco and the others, but in the interests of not getting caught by Eddie, who would almost certainly tell Iris about all of this, he zips everyone back to STAR Labs.

"Why didn't you capture the masked man?" Wells asks when Barry is done recounting the full story and has mostly finished defrosting. “You should have brought him here as well; we could have put him into one of the Accelerator’s holding cells to make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

"I don't think he’s a meta, though. Or, uh, that he technically committed any crime, I guess?" Barry says. "Well, assault and battery, maybe, but technically Cisco also threatened him -"

"What was that about him being 'allowed', anyway?" Felicity demands, running her hands through her hair to pat it back down. "That part didn't make any sense."

"Unless Mirror-Mask there is just being a really big hypocrite," Cisco offers. He's still scowling. 

“Are we calling him Mirror-Mask?” Barry asks, temporarily distracted.

“No, forget it, it’s a terrible name. He doesn’t deserve to be a rip off of a Neil Gaiman movie like that –”

"Going back to the actual subject at hand, we still don't know whether the masked man is -" Caitlin starts saying.

Barry's phone pings. "It's Joe," he says, reading the message. "He's ditched Eddie for the time being and wants to talk to us ASAP. I'll go get him."

The others scarcely notice the few minutes he's gone, if the way they're still arguing over the masked man's motives is any indication.

"I hate it when you do that," Joe says, clutching at his chest. 

"You asked!" Barry protests.

"I know I did," Joe says, his face going grim. "That's how you know what I've got to tell you is serious."

Everyone shuts up and looks at him. 

"What have you discovered, Detective?" Wells asks.

"Him," Joe says, jabbing a finger at the display showing a picture of the masked man in his blue parka. 

"Wait, you've figured out who he is?" Felicity asks, eyes bright. 

"Wait - that was Eddie in the train station," Cisco says, realizing. "And since you're partners, that means you were there, too – you arrested him?"

"No," Joe says.

"He escaped?" Caitlin exclaims. "How?"

But Joe is shaking his head. 

"But if he didn't escape, Detective, why _didn't_ you arrest him?" Wells asks. His eyes are narrowed. "Surely, at the very least, his attacks on our Mr. Allen would have given you enough cause, if not the derailed train itself..."

"I don't think he derailed the train," Barry offers. "He seemed really pissed when he thought I’d done it. Like, _really_ pissed."

"Still!" Cisco says. "He shot the cold gun at Barry and threatened me. How is that not enough for an arrest?"

"Because," Joe says, looking extremely disgruntled, "it's not actually illegal to use non-lethal force on individuals who are currently violently resisting arrest."

Barry frowns, and he's not alone. "That doesn't make sense," he says. "That would only apply..."

He trails off.

No.

Surely not.

"The masked supervillain is a _cop_?!" Felicity exclaims. "No way!"

"Oh yes," Joe says. "And more than that, he's not just any cop, either. You've got yourself a full on police captain on your tail, Bar. And like I told you, Captain Cold isn't the type to stop for _anything_."

"Captain Cold?" Cisco says. "Wait, the internal affairs guy you were telling us about? _That_ Captain Cold?"

"Got it in one," Joe says. "He might be IA, but he’s still a cop; he's still authorized to go after any crimes in progress that he sees. The mask thing’s a bit weird, guess it’s habit from when he worked undercover, but when we ran up to him, he just pulled it off, casual as can be, and explained that he’d been chasing a criminal. And since he outranks me, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it even if it wasn’t legal."

"Ohhh that makes so much sense. That’s why he's 'allowed'," Felicity whispers, running her hands through her hair. “Right. It’s legal for him to use force to take down a presumably violent vigilante because he’s a cop acting in fulfillment of his duties. Wow, this explains so much...”

"Hold up, hold up," Barry says, still trying to process everything. "Are you telling me that the Head of CCPD Internal Affairs is a supervillain?"

Barry has no idea what to do with that.

Judging by the echoing silence that follows Joe's nod, no one else does, either.


	5. 5

"I can't believe you sometimes, boss," Danvers complains. "You're just unbelievable."

"But Danvers," Len says, widening his eyes, "if you don't say 'I believe in Leonard Snart' and clap three times, my inner light will fade and then I'll die -"

"You are _not_ a fairy!"

"Only technically true," Len says. "I'm pansexual, while that term is generally used -"

"You know what I mean," Danvers says, giving a playful push to his shoulder. Danvers is ridiculously strong and has issues remembering that sometimes, so the push is enough to send a lesser man toppling down to the floor. Luckily, Len figured out the strength thing pretty early and he's learned to compensate for it, relaxing his muscles and going with the flow of it, so he's able to straighten up again pretty easy.

He hasn't told Danvers that he knows, of course, since she's so obviously embarrassed by it. 

Just like she's too embarrassed to admit that she's hidden a microwave somewhere in her office that she uses to heat up his coffee or hot chocolate whenever he happens to arrive, since there is _no way_ she's good enough at guessing when he'll arrive to make sure that stuff is always warm. 

He keeps trying to hint to her that he really doesn't mind microwaved coffee - especially since Danvers has a knack for making it taste freshly brewed - but she keeps looking vaguely confused whenever he brings it up. 

"Yes, I know what you mean," Len allows. "And just why am I being unbelievable this time?"

"You're planning on going out _again_ ," she says, throwing her hands in the air. "With the mask and that stupid parka -"

"I’ll have you know that the parka keeps my core warm against the gun," Len points out. "Besides, it's the only winter coat I have out of storage right now."

It might be the only winter coat he owns, but that's a minor detail. 

"You know the media is calling you a supervillain, right?" Danvers asks, crossing her arms.

"And by ‘media’, you mean that one specific blog, right?"

"...yes."

"That blog also thinks I derailed that train by icing the tracks," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Despite the fact that the official investigation concluded that it was a combination of a mechanical issue and human error. That one?"

Human error, of course, is a reference to the fact that the transportation department couldn’t be bothered to keep their trains in sufficiently good condition that a miniscule spot of ice – no more than a foot or two – was enough to keep the damn thing on the line.

_Ice_. Len can scarcely believe it, but there it is, and it at least goes some ways to explaining why the kid could have thought that Len was the one responsible for it. 

Though if a train can’t run over a few feet of ice without jumping a track, there’s a problem that speaks of years of sustained incompetence _anyway_.

Still, whatever the reason, the derailment would have been a total catastrophe if it wasn't for the Streak - no, the blog is calling him the "Flash" now.

It makes for a troublesome dilemma. On one hand, it seems like this Flash kid is actually doing good things, like rescuing the people on that train. 

On the other hand, he's still taking the law into his own hands.

Violence is still violence, even against a criminal. 

Len's list of corrupt cops to take down includes a good number that seem to have forgotten that their right to be violent extends only as far as it takes to fulfill their duties and no further. When you apply the same principle to a civilian who lacks any authority or right to use violence as a means of enacting law at all -

Hmm. Alternatively, Len could just charge the Flash with multiple counts of assault and battery the next time they meet. That might even work.

"Okay, I'll bite," Len says, finally giving in to Danvers' pointed glare. "Why is it unbelievable that I’d go out again? What’s unbelievable about it?"

"Uh, the part – make that the _whole thing_ – where you're considering getting further involved with this whole Flash thing, obviously!" Danvers says. "Boss, what part of 'the Families want to kill you' is going over your head here?"

"I'm your boss," Len mock-grumbles. "Be respectful."

"Not in a million years."

"I don't see what the problem is, though," Len says. "It’s not like I’m going totally solo on it or anything."

"Boss," Danvers says flatly. "You convinced the Commissioner that the Flash incidents represented a possible threat to the overall impression of city security because someone, somewhere, was probably following along with his exploits on secret police radios -"

"The Commissioner is running for office this year," Len says dryly. "Anyone who offered him a method to haze the Families by sending people in to investigate the illicit police radios _we all know they have_ was going to be able to convince him of just about anything, including an invasion from Jupiter."

"True," Danvers allows. "Though to be entirely correct, that would be an invasion from the moons of Jupiter, not Jupiter, since Jupiter is a gas giant and not – wait, no, _not_ the point I was trying to make. The _point_ is that you also got him to agree that because there is the possibility that the Flash is working with a cop to get on the police band, thereby making it part of your jurisdiction, that meant that you could help sponsor a Flash-related task force."

"Co-sponsor," Len says. "Singh signed on."

"Yeah, to keep an eye on you."

"Noticed that, did you?" Len says, pleased. "We'll make a proper spy out of you yet."

“Aw, thanks, boss,” Danvers says with a smile, complimented, but quickly goes back to being annoyed with him. "I heard him talking about it in his office. He's not really in favor of catching the Flash - he thinks the Flash is doing more good than harm - but he's willing to back you so that he can figure out what scheme you're up to."

"My reputation precedes me, clearly."

"Boss..."

"Relax. I'm one step ahead of him - he offered me Joe West to be on my team, which is pretty obvious sabotage given how much West obviously hates me; I told him I'd take Eddie Thawne instead. Since they're partners, he wasn't really in a position to refuse, and Thawne's a good kid."

"Coming from you, that's high honors," Danvers says, but she's smiling again. 

"You're not bad yourself," Len says, smirking when she squeaks and blushes. "Your compilation of weird incidents with multiple uncoordinated eye-witness reports was key to convincing the Commissioner that there was something there worth checking out."

"It's my job, boss," she says, grinning.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not part of a secretary’s job.”

“Admin assistant, boss.”

"Well, while we’re at it, thanks for letting me borrow that mask," Len says. "Turned out there _were_ some Family guys looking for me that night." His contracts had been very specific about that, since D'Angelo let slip he'd be meeting with Len, but it’d been a risk Len was willing to take. 

" _Made_ you borrow it, more like it," Danvers sniffs. "I can't believe you were just going to - to go out with your face just, like, right _out there_ in the open - it's like you never even read a comic book -"

"I'm not _actually_ a supervillain," Len reminds her, deeply amused. Danvers could probably take over the world if she found herself in a world that worked on comic book logic instead of real world logic. "I'm not doing anything illegal; I'm just policing in a creative and out-of-the-box way –” 

Danvers snorts.

“–and meeting my community’s needs in dealing with a vigilante like that,” Len continues, cheerfully ignoring her. “Anyway, the mask was perfect - total anonymity without any obstruction of function. Why'd you have it lying around, anyway?"

Danvers turns red and starts spluttering something incoherent, which means it's one of those things she's weirdly embarrassed about. 

It's like how she claims she takes the train to work, but manages to be there on time even when Len knows there's been a massive train delay. 

Honestly, he has no idea what's going on in Danvers' brain sometimes. It's not like there's a stigma against carpooling or anything...

"Never mind, don't care," Len interrupts, waving a hand, and Danvers looks at him gratefully. 

They talked about it, once, all these unusual reactions that she has, the way she gets flustered and evasive about the weirdest things. She'd come into his office late at night, jaw clenched with determination and fists shaking with anxiety, and offered to explain it all to him, because she didn't want him to think she was lying to him. He was, she explained, her only friend in Central City, and she was pretty sure she was his in return right at that moment, and she didn't want him to start suspecting her of betraying him by keeping secrets.

He'd taken one look at her, seen all of that anxiety and how she was forcing herself to take a step she clearly didn't want to take but felt she had to, and he'd promptly told her that he didn't care if she was a little green man from Mars as long as she did her job and didn't sell him out. 

She'd stared at him blankly, so he'd explained: she very obviously didn't _want_ to tell him whatever it was she was offering to tell him, not yet and maybe not ever; rather, she just felt that she had to. But Len doesn't believe in outing people over anything before they're ready, so whatever it was she felt she had to tell him, she could tell him whenever she really wanted to. If she was more comfortable with him not asking, well, then he wouldn’t ask - as long as whatever it was didn’t involve him getting sold out, which he was pretty sure it didn’t, then he honestly didn’t care. 

Of course, then she'd burst into tears and Len had hidden under his desk in an attempt to get away from the rampant display of emotions, yelling all the while that he would add a no tears clause to her contract, which had the side effect of making her start to laugh even as she'd cried.

Ultimately, she'd decided she really wasn't ready yet, but that she thought she might be, eventually, and they'd gone from there.

To be perfect honest, Danvers has always been something of a mystery, right from the first time they'd met. At first Len assumed it was because she wasn't from Central - Danvers is from the area around National City, some small town in the outskirts, and she'd done some work there in various administrative assistant roles before she'd abruptly moved to Central only a few months before Len discovered and hired her away from the court reporter temp pool she'd been working in. 

At that point, all he'd cared about was finding someone who wasn't very obviously a spy planted by either the Families or the other police departments. Danvers had been the court reporter at his first corruption trial; she'd been fast (she had to be, being a court reporter), efficient, unafraid of the Family connections of the cop on trial, and had trouble hiding her smirks when Len made a particularly snarky comment. 

More importantly, she had a clean background – as far as he’s concerned, anyway; he hadn't quite gotten used to working legit at that time, since he'd been less than two weeks out of the hospital and spitting mad, so he'd just had those of his illegal contacts that hadn't heard the news check her out and confirm that there wasn’t anything criminal about her - and anyway Len got along with her the few times he'd dragged her into various conference rooms to do some freelance transcribing of plea deal negotiations and deposition testimony. 

So he'd decided to take a gamble and asked her if she'd like a thankless job saving the city where everyone would take her achievements for granted and turn up their noses in disdain at her failures, plus a small pay increase and shitty health care.

Amazingly, even with a pitch as awful as that, she accepted. 

Apparently, Danvers enjoys fighting the good fight for barely any reward. 

That, or she _really_ needed the steady paycheck. 

Len honestly doesn’t care which.

It’d been a little rocky at the start, but they got used to each other over time. Len's an abrasive asshole and doesn't know how to use the services of a secretary, but Danvers spends half the time acting like she's invulnerable and the other half acting like she’s afraid she’s going to break everything just by breathing on it, and that’s also pretty annoying. Luckily, after some encouragement, it turned out that she had the guts to stand up to him and call him out when he’s on his bullshit, and ever since then they’ve worked well together. 

Now Len likes to think that they’ve even become friends. 

Danvers even eventually opened up a bit about her history. 

Apparently, her abrupt shift from National to Central had followed a pretty terrible blow-up with her sister and mother. Danvers hadn't given all that many details, but from what little she'd said, Len gathers that the sister had accepted a position based on some trait of Danvers' that Danvers would have preferred to keep quiet, a position that involved using Danvers as a case study, and Danvers hadn't taken it well when she'd found out. 

"I know exactly what you mean - fucking shrinks," Len told her after that particular confession, nodding vigorously. They'd been having drinks in his office at the time, since the last time they'd gone out to a bar some Family grunt had pulled a gun on Len and Danvers had managed to get in between the guy and Len. Luckily, the gun jammed or maybe the guy missed, but either way nobody seemed like they’d gotten hit with a bullet, and Len hit the guy over the head with his crutch, but he'd decided not to risk Danvers doing something that stupid again. "Just because you ain’t neurotypical makes 'em think that they can push you around. S'like they totally forget that you’ve got feelings, or at least they pretend to themselves that you wouldn't care about that type of shit at all just ‘cause you’re different. Mick had one of those - a foster mom that adopted him because she wanted to write a paper about pyromania. He liked her right up until he figured out that she just wanted his cooperation so she could do more observations. Never even occurred to her to think about how he'd feel when he found out she used him to get ahead in her career."

Danvers, halfway into a bottle of tequila and a pint of Ben and Jerry's, giggled a little hysterically. "Yes," she said. "That, it’s like that exactly. I never thought there'd be a parallel – but yes. That. It's just like that. She's my _sister_ , you know? She should be on my side, not – not _using_ me to get, I don’t know, up an extra step on the ladder!"

"Hell yeah," Len said solemnly, clinking glasses with her. He wondered a little what unique trait Danvers had that her sister had tried to take advantage of – some form of autism, maybe? ADHD? He’d heard that manifested differently for girls, and anyway it made sense given how she clearly had some sensory processing issues, hearing things louder than he did and flinching at relatively mild sounds and sometimes getting overwhelmed by emotions, not to mention the way she sometimes didn’t quite get certain basic social conventions – but he wasn’t going to ask or anything; that’d be seriously rude. After all, _he_ certainly didn’t care what she had as long as she kept doing her job, and he was pretty sure by now that she knew that if she needed any accommodations, she only needed ask for them and he'd do everything in his power to get it done. 

He did make a mental note to see if she’d like some more pillows to go next to her desk for her to fidget with, though. She liked those. 

"And she even made it out like she was just doing it to _protect_ me!" Danvers exclaimed. "But if she was, she would've asked, right? She wouldn't have lied about what she was doing. She wouldn't have - she wasn't ever planning on telling me. Not ever! I only found out because I was looking for where I'd hidden her birthday present and we've always used the same hiding spots and I found a _file_. On _me_. Who even does that?!"

"Bullshit," Len agreed. "Total bullshit."

"And then Mom got involved and she was just pissed off about Alex's job, _not_ about the fact that she was studying me, except it turns out that when Alex gets frustrated, she blames me for taking up all the attention and, like, I don't know, ruining her life by making her not an only child or something stupid like that. And – and – and while we were all blowing up about _that_ , it turned out that mom's _also_ been lying to us – both of us – for literally years about what happened to Dad – about how he died – and then Alex starts blaming _me_ about it because the trouble all started after I got adopted -"

“Ouch. Below the belt.”

“I know! And – and what’s the worst part, you know – they’d always been on my case about being ‘normal’. Both of them. Normal, normal, normal, _normal_ , until I was ready to scream, and the whole time they both know so much more than what they were telling me – and taking _advantage_ of the fact that I’m not normal – and it’s just _not fair_!”

Her lip was trembling again. 

"To shitty families," Len said, raising his glass. He'd already told her about his dad, since he wanted her to be on the look-out in case Lewis reared his ugly head anywhere near Len's new job, and she'd been great about not blatantly pitying him too much about it. One of the reasons he liked her so much. "And the lies they tell." 

After a minute, he added, "Lowercase 'f'."

"Uppercase 'f' Families lie too," Danvers pointed out.

"They're not who we're toasting. C'mon, don't leave me hanging."

Danvers giggled and clinked glasses with him. “I still miss them, you know,” she added. “I think I’d have forgiven them, eventually, if I’d stayed. Probably way earlier than I really should have. Like, five minutes later.”

“Socialization and habit,” Len says solemnly. “Heard it’s worse for girls; you’re raised to be all forgiving and shit, yeah?”

“Yeah, basically. That, plus, you know, I did always feel guilty about how I just showed up on their doorstep, so I’ve always kinda tried to play the peace-maker, you know?”

“That’s the habit half of the equation.”

“Yeah…anyway, I probably would’ve found a reason to forgive and forget and everything, but, ugh, I was just so angry. I just – I was in between jobs at the time, too. I mean, I had an interview scheduled the next day with CatCo Worldwide Media as Cat Grant’s personal assistant. No guarantee I’d get it, of course. But there was like this _moment_ where I realized that if I was fighting with my family then, well, I didn’t _really_ have anything keeping me there. In National City, I mean. So I just packed a bunch of my stuff and flew away. Ended up at a hotel in Central.” 

“Tell me you didn’t use your credit card.”

“I’m pretty sure that particular hotel didn’t even accept cards,” Danvers said dryly. She was familiar enough with Central City’s extremely shitty hospitality scene now for it to be a joke, though Len suspected it hadn't been when she first arrived. “It wasn’t exactly good quality, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, do I ever.” 

“Anyway, I was still steaming angry the next morning, so I pulled a bunch of cash out of my account, canceled all my cards, got myself that temp job as a court reporter, and grabbed the first apartment that came on the market, and, well, by the time I calmed down enough to start feeling guilty about our fight, I was pretty well rooted here and wasn’t really in the mood to go back to National and be the first one to forgive. Again.”

“Totally reasonable.”

“They haven’t even apologized, you know,” Danvers said, draining her glass again. She had the alcohol tolerance of a mule. Len was just drunk enough at this point – thank God he isn’t macho enough to think he needed to match her shot-to-shot or else he’d be _dead_ – to think about how much Mick would enjoy that quality of hers when-if he woke up. “I reached out to them eventually and they just started worrying about me being all on my own in a big city, how will I be able to handle it on my own, is this going to make it hard for me to stay _normal_ without support, yadda, yadda, stupid yadda, and when I pointed out that I was still really angry at them, they just, I don’t know, wanted me to get over it - they even got my cousin to come try to, quote, talk some sense into me, end quote.”

“Rude.”

“They keep comparing me to him,” Danvers added bitterly. “He’s _much_ better at being normal.”

“Ain’t he some sort of weirdo Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist that works almost exclusively in Third World countries where there ain’t no modern internet?” Len asks skeptically. “That ain’t exactly what I’d call normal.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t really come back to America much anymore,” Danvers says with a shrug. “And when he does, he avoids cities whenever possible, even though he used to want to go work in a big paper in Metropolis. He even had a job offer from the Daily Planet! His original set of foster parents would’ve wanted him to take it, but they died and he came to live with – well, with my family – and they all convinced him it’d be too much for him, so in the end he didn’t take it. He’s – he’s like me. Not normal. But apparently it’s okay to not be normal as long as you do it where no one can see you or report you or something like that.”

“Wow,” Len said. “What fucking _assholes_. I hope he told you to carry on.”

Danvers grinned. “He told me to do what I thought was right, no matter what anyone said. And that’s when I signed a year-long lease – not on the first apartment I snagged, don’t worry, I’m in a much better area of town now –”

Good, Len was about to ask.

“– and also changed my phone number so my mom and my sister would stop harassing me at work.” She drained another glass. “And that’s why we’re still not talking. Not until _I_ decide that I’m ready to talk to them again.”

“I don’t recall them harassing you at work,” Len said.

“I mostly ran out the back to take their calls,” Danvers said. “The one time they tried to call you instead of me, you’d just come back from PT and were _super_ grouchy, so you told them that you would bring the full force of the FBI on their asses for wire fraud if they didn’t fuck right off.”

Len – vaguely remembered that. He’d thought they were telemarketers or possibly evangelists. 

“Don’t worry,” Danvers added, grinning. “I appreciated it.”

It was a good night, even if Len distinctly remembers getting increasingly drunk as it went on (Kara didn’t, but again she has that ridiculous metabolism) and telling her about the first time he met Mick and some other unnecessarily soppy stories about him.

Either way, though, that background made Danvers understandably touchy about people who lied to close friends and family – and that, in turn, made Len feel more like he could trust her…

"Mask or no mask, I still don't like the idea of you going out in person, you know," Danvers says, snapping Len out of his reverie. "You're still fragile."

Len makes a face at her. He would love to dispute that, but he used his new braces for less than two hours yesterday, just for the not-really-maybe-kinda-sorta-masked-supervillain-superhero-confrontation-thing, and he's already got cramps very nearly everywhere to show for it. 

Fucking bullet wounds. Hollywood is a filthy liar when it comes to recovery time, especially for ones that nick your spine. 

Actually, that reminds him that he needs to call Lisa again – she’s still incredibly pissed off at him for getting hurt after having promised time and time again that he’d be fine doing his thing and that getting her the money to go off and live straight was worth the risk. 

She refuses to see him again until he’s better, even though she demands regular phone calls. He knows it’s irrational, she knows it’s irrational, but he can’t begrudge her whatever superstitions she relies on as coping mechanisms to deal with a father as awful as Lewis and a brother as reckless as Len, even though he does miss her. 

"You _could_ always let the beat cops do their jobs," Danvers continues, sounding almost wistful about it even when she knows there's no chance. As it happens, she and Lisa get along great, albeit only by text message. "It's what they do, you know. Especially if this Eddie guy's good..."

"And miss out on the adrenaline?" Len asks, arching his eyebrows at her. "No, seriously. I can't step back now; I sold the Commissioner on me supervising this personally, and Singh only agreed to back me once I specified that I'd take the fall if anything blew up in our faces - which it won't, even if we do find that this Flash guy is up to no good -"

Danvers makes a face. Subtly - it's barely a wrinkle in her nose - but Len still catches it and interprets it.

"You have news," Len says, interrupting himself. He knows all of Danvers’ tells. "Tell me the news."

"It's not _definite_ yet," Danvers demurs, but Len's already waving off the disclaimer.

"I'd take initial results from you over a definitive say-so from any cop in this division, Eddie Thawne included," Len tells her when she seems resistant to continuing. "I'll keep in mind that it's preliminary. What's up?"

"There’s been a noticeable increase in missing persons reports in Central since the Particle Accelerator explosion, for one thing," Danvers says. " _Noticeable_. Even if we only track the period since the Flash has been known to be active, there's - well - a lot. More than usual."

"Correlation doesn't mean causation."

"Do I teach you to pick pockets? No? Then don't lecture me on statistics. I'm getting to the point. The point is: I've correlated instances of people seeing blurs of light or lightning with those missing persons' reports, and there's a link."

Len straightens up at that. "How much of a link?"

Damn, and he'd really been starting to think of the Flash as harmless, or at least starting to hope that he'd gotten to the kid before he started letting his worst instincts take over. But if he's already a murderer...

"No deaths," Danvers says, clearly divining his thoughts from his face. "Just weirdo disappearances - sometimes of people who'd already gone partway off the grid already, even. But we're talking eyewitnesses putting the Flash - or someone like him - at ground zero of some of these disappearances. We're talking credit card purchases stopping the day after a Flash sighting in some guy's last known vicinity."

"Damnit."

"Yeah," she says with a sigh. "I was really hopeful, you know?"

"You were hopeful about the Hood guy in Starling before the murders started, too."

"This one seemed nicer," Danvers says firmly. "Less intimidation, less judgment, less 'you failed this city' –” Len will never tell her, but Danvers cannot do a spooky intimidating voice to save her life. “– more actually stopping crimes by dumping perps at the station door."

"Thereby eliminating the link between them and the crime scene and letting them plead out on technicalities," Len says dryly. "Remember that jewel shop case? If we hadn't had camera evidence from the CCTV, we'd be up the creek and the perps in question would be free as songbirds. And remember, like I told you -"

"Just because he's going after criminals doesn't mean he's not just trying to take out the competition," Danvers recites. "I know, I know."

"Good. You got anything else for me?"

Danvers makes another face. "We-ell..."

"Danvers."

She sighs. "Okay, but one question first."

Len arches his eyebrows at her.

"Is there any chance you're going to be so focused on this Flash thing that you'll ditch the Allen investigation? Because in comparison, Allen is really small stuff -"

"None," Len interrupts. He knows his voice has gone a bit icy. "Allen's corrupt; I'm sure of it. It's just a matter of proving it."

"But you actually _like_ him!"

"I like lots of people -"

"Please remember who you're talking to here," Danvers says dryly. "I know for a fact that you don't like people. Any people. Your list of people you _do_ like can probably be counted on the fingers of a man who’s had a few cut off - and I'm including your regular information contacts that you don't _actually_ like on that list."

Len makes a face at her. Sadly, she's not wrong.

Worse, he reaches the same conclusion even _after_ adding Barry Allen to the list of people he likes. 

"You're usually better at prioritizing your investigations, that's all," Danvers adds, apologetically. "I just - it's pretty obvious that the only reason you're going after Allen is, well, you know..."

"I've got a few more investigations already up and running," Len points out, feeling a little guilty. She's not wrong about his reasons. She's also not wrong about the fact that in a normal situation, he wouldn't have thought Allen's bizarre brand of hard-to-spot corruption was bad enough to get this obsessed over. Especially not once he found out how unbelievably friendly and bright and funny Allen is...shit, Danvers is right. Len really needs to figure out how to make more friends. Not to mention how to get a real date rather than whatever-it-is he has with Allen on Friday. "The DAs already have enough info to take three corrupt cops out of active duty, which they have, and I've given them enough to get wiretapping warrants out on another three -"

Central's so goddamn corrupt. 

It's a good thing Len knows how to play the system and make sure the occasional corrupt DA that gets assigned one of his cases is either scared into working it straight or that the case they get involves corruption by an opposing Family, so they’re incentivized to press on, because otherwise he wouldn't have enough DAs to handle all of the cases he's feeding them – and all the while he’s building a body of law that he’ll one day use to take the corrupt DAs down, too...

"- so all in all, they're actually pretty happy that I'm taking some time to do my own projects, like Allen and the Flash," Len concludes. "Hell, Singh definitely thinks I’m up to something, and even he’s relieved that I’ve taken up some ‘normal’ policing instead of harassing his officers left and right. I've got the time to do both of 'em and I intend to. Now, why do you ask?"

"But you’re so cute about him," Danvers grumbles. "It's not fair."

" _What_ ain't fair, Danvers?" Len’s not touching that. 

"The comms system the Flash uses," Danvers says, finally giving in. "The one we couldn’t hack into? I've managed to triangulate where the other end of the signal originates."

"You did? That's great!"

" _And_ I think I've located those people you gave me sketches of," she adds, nodding at her desk. "Though next time you go out, I'm equipping you with cameras - your artistic ability definitely lies in blueprints, not portraits."

"Next time I go out Flash-hunting, I'll have official CCPD backing rather than implied," Len says with a shrug. "You can put all the cameras you like on me then. You've tracked them all down?"

"Yep."

“And they’re associated with the same place the signal comes from?”

“Yep.”

"And that is - where?"

Danvers sighs. "I think - and no absolute guarantee, but I’m moderately sure – that the other end of that signal came from STAR Labs."

Len freezes. 

STAR Labs. 

Technically defunct after the Accelerator explosion, property of the now disgraced solitary genius Harrison Wells, and private "clinic" of only one patient: Barry Allen. 

Of course.

Of _course_.

"He's in on it," Len says, starting to get angry. "Allen. He's involved with whatever the hell new Family unit Wells must be trying to put together or whatever’s going on there. Allen's using his CSI skills to help get this Flash guy to would-be crime scenes - figuring out where their rivals are and sending the Flash to set them up - or, worse, covering up the disappearances and murders the Flash has already set up -"

At least the existence of this law-breaking Flash kid means that there's still hope that Allen hasn't moved into full assassin territory yet. If he hasn't crossed the line to targeted murder, then Len can make sure his sentence isn't too bad - some minimal prison time, maybe, definitely a lengthy parole period, and of course he'll never work in the police again, but at least Len won't have to think about smiling, friendly Allen locked behind bars for years and years, having his spirit crushed under the abusive steel boots of the prison guards...

"Certainly seems like it," Danvers agrees, glumly disappointed. She'd really been hoping for Allen to be clean, Len knows. "But it's still just a guess, boss. I don't have anywhere near enough for a warrant, either on the Flash stuff or Allen."

"Looks like Friday's still on, then," Len says. He's going to find out everything he can about what scheme Wells and Allen and this ‘Flash’ are cooking up in STAR Labs, and he's going to put a stop to it. He reaches out to grab his crutch, using it to lever himself up. 

"Where are you going?" Danvers asks with a frown. "It's not Friday yet."

"Different lead," Len assures her. "Same endpoint. You want anything from Jitters?"

"Cupcake," Danvers says immediately. "Like, four of them. Oooh, and one of those crullers. You owe me sugar. So much sugar. In the meantime, I'll go back to putting together that list of sightings for you. I know I said the preliminary list was all I was going to do, but I swear I think there's something weird there and I want to follow it up."

"I trust you," Len says again. He likes saying it: he almost never did, for most of his life. He's trying to be better about it now so that he'll be able to say what he needs to say to Mick when (if) he wakes up. "Let me know if anything new comes up."

With that, he heads over to Jitters. It's late, but his contact was busy during the day and late evening was the earliest time that she would agree to meet with him.

Better yet, she's already there when he arrives, typing away on her laptop.

Len makes his way over and settles down in the seat across from her.

"Miss West," he says with his best charm-the-marks smirk fixed firmly on his face. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. Big fan of your blog..."


	6. 6

Getting a summons to "meet me in my office in five, Allen" from the Big Guy is never a good sign, particularly when Barry's, like, 95% sure he hasn't done anything recently. 

Anything, like, oh, masquerading as a police officer. Taking unapproved days off without notice. Investigating supernatural events with a CCPD badge and pretending he's sanctioned. 

All things he's been yelled at before. 

But he hasn't done any of those things _recently_! That’s got to be worth something, right?

Of course, now he has all his secret work as the Flash...

Barry slips into Captain Singh's office and offers a hopeful smile. Maybe this is just a chat, not a yelling at?

The smile is not returned.

Yeah, this is definitely a yelling at.

Singh is on the phone, so he just waves for Barry to sit down while he finishes up.

Barry does so, snagging a pen from Singh's desk as he does. Maybe if he just holds onto the pen, he won't embarrass himself by flailing.

Singh eventually finishes the call and turns to look at Barry.

He doesn't say anything for a long moment.

Barry's dying here. Seriously.

"What are you doing, Allen?" Singh finally says with a sigh.

"Uh," Barry says, fiddling with the pen between his fingers and promptly dropping it with a loud clatter that makes him flinch. So very not cool, Barry. "I don't know what you mean? Sir."

"I bet you don't," Singh says, more to himself than Barry.

"Have there been any problems with my work?" Barry tries, figuring that must be the issue. "If it's about the paperwork, I know it was late, but I did get it all done -"

About five seconds before coming into Singh's office.

But no, Singh's shaking his head.

Barry frowns. "With my results, then?" He's fiercely protective of his work, like any CSI, and he'll stand behind his work product any day. Sure, he's been distracted by the Flash business, but he hasn't let it impact his actual work.

He thinks.

"No, Allen," Singh says. "Your results are fine."

"Okay," Barry says, relieved but also deeply confused. If it's not any of those, and he's pretty sure Singh doesn't know about the Flash stuff, then what could it be? "Then why'd you call me in here? Uh, sir?"

"Someone's been doing some searches in the personnel files with your login," Singh says. "It sent up some flags. I want to know if it was you."

Personnel files? Why would Barry be looking in -

Oh.

Right.

The Captain Cold investigation. 

Cisco hadn't been able to hack the CCPD (something about their systems being too antiquated) and they didn't want to bother Felicity, who'd gone back to Starling in a hurry to inform Oliver of the possibility of supervillain cops, which apparently hadn’t ever occurred to either of them, so Barry figured he could start off the investigation himself by checking the files through legitimate channels. 

He'd checked the public directory, but couldn’t find anything other than Captain Cold’s real name (“Snart, Leonard Jacob,” apparently, which, seriously, poor guy – Barry wouldn’t much like being named something like ‘Snart’ in middle school, he can tell you that much), so he’d set a search running on the personal file database earlier - the CCPD computers were protected not so much by their firewalls but by their sheer ancient creaking weight, and that meant they ran slower than glaciers - and went back to work, forgetting all about it.

And now Captain Singh is asking questions.

"Uh," Barry says. "I mean. That is..."

"That's what I thought," Singh says with a sigh. "I'm going to pretend for both our sakes that those searches were a mistake, Allen, and you're going to drop it. _Now_."

"What? Why? It's just personnel files, those aren't confidential -"

"They are if someone's undercover," Singh says. 

Barry pauses. "But Captain Cold - uh, Snart - is the head of IA."

AKA, not a member of undercover operations.

"That's right," Singh says. "But he was an undercover guy for nearly twenty years before that. Family work."

Barry's eyes go wide. "Wow." He's never met anyone who’d done serious undercover ops, much less Family work. Much less for twenty years! "And he _survived_?"

"Barely," Singh tells him, his mouth tight. "He didn't get caught for years, one of the best guys we had on the inside, and then it all blew up because someone here in the CCPD spilled the beans on him, leading to him getting tortured and shot a few times."

Oh, shit.

Well, _that's_ certainly a reason to be on the warpath against CCPD cops. A pretty valid reason, too.

"I thought - Joe said - that is -"

"Let me guess," Singh says, his voice suddenly very dry. "Nasty old Captain Cold's unreasonably biased against all cops, guilty or otherwise, because he's got unresolved issues with his abusive dad that he's taking out on the rest of us? Seems like that’s Detective West's favorite line, nowadays."

Barry winces. "Yes, sir."

"Don't get me wrong, Allen," Singh says. "I know West. I know that he means well, and I know that he's a damn fine detective when he pulls his head out of his ass, but sometimes..." Singh shakes his head. "Most of the precinct listens to him, too, which isn't helping any of us."

Yeah, Barry can see the problem there. 

"Anyway," Singh says, voice brisk again. "As I was saying, Captain Snart's records are still sealed because he's still the number one target for multiple Families."

"That must be why he wears a mask!" Barry exclaims. 

Singh stares at him.

"Uh," Barry says. "Or so Joe tells me. There was an incident -"

"Thank you, I'm familiar with the incident in question," Singh says. He looks like he has a headache. "Yes, you're correct; Captain Snart has decided that wearing a mask will be useful in maintaining his personal security while he pursues – certain lines of investigation -"

"The new joint task force?" Barry asks. He'd heard whispers. "It's related to the Fl- I mean, the Streak, right?"

"Or whatever weird stuff's been going on in Central recently, yes," Singh says, looking even more pained. "I don't suppose you've got any insight on that?"

Barry should probably tell Captain Singh about the metahumans. But if he does, then Singh will want to know how he knows, and that would turn attention onto Wells and STAR Labs and maybe even on the Flash himself, and then Captain Cold will have everything he needs to come after all of them, putting Barry's friends and loved ones in danger...

"I didn't think so," Singh says when Barry remains quiet. "As it happens, yes, the new task force will be focusing on the Streak, among other things. It'll be co-run by Captain Snart and myself; he'll be taking lead personally, since he doesn't have much of a staff yet -"

Too paranoid to trust anyone, Barry interprets.

"- and I'll be assigning one of my detectives to be his local liaison."

Barry nods. That sounded about right. "Understood, sir. If you don't mind my asking, which detective were you thinking? Because I know Joe would be interested..."

Joe would be pissed off beyond all belief at having to work with Captain Cold, but, on the other hand, it _would_ give Team Flash an inside man on the CCPD's investigation into the Flash. That way Joe would be able to give them updates, warn them of any trouble, even redirect the lines of inquiry away from them, maybe plant some misleading clues...

Barry feels sick all of a sudden. What he was just thinking sounds an awful lot like corruption.

Like exactly the sort of corruption the head of IA would be looking for.

Like the sort of corruption that Barry fought so hard against when it was Dibny doing it.

Fuck.

Yeah, maybe all of that stuff might be necessary to keep the CCPD from finding out about the Flash. But if deceiving the police to such an extent is necessary just for him to stay operational, what does that say about what Barry is doing?

Is Barry really doing the right thing in being the Flash, if it means that he has to break laws and corrupt the course of justice to do it?

"- wouldn't agree to take him, and I can't blame him," Singh is saying. "He's agreed to take Detective Thawne instead."

Eddie.

Barry's first thought, shameful as it is to admit, is to wonder how Iris will react to finding out her boyfriend is involved in hunting down her hero.

But - no. No, Barry. No hoping that she gets angry and breaks up with Eddie, and then somehow discovers she's always been in love with you via some unrealistic twist of events. You're better than that.

You _should_ be better than that.

Besides, you're going out with Cool Coffee Guy (Len!) later today. 

As friends, sure, but still.

"Listen to me, Allen," Singh says, rapping his knuckles against his desk to get Barry's attention. "You need to step lightly for a while, okay? It's hard for all of us, having IA staffed here, and a lot of people are very angry for a lot of different reasons, some of which are more justified than others. There's a reason that your little search threw up red flags so quickly. So whatever it is that you may have heard that sparked your interest in Captain Snart, you need to drop it."

"But -"

"Allen. That's an order."

"Yes, sir," Barry says. "It wasn't anything in specific, sir; I was just curious about him. Sir."

Singh looks at Barry for a long moment. "Allen," he finally says. "What I'm going to tell you doesn't leave this room, okay? And I'm only telling you because I know you're boneheaded enough to try to find a different way to keep tracking Snart down, and I want to make it clear to you why that would be a bad idea, okay?"

Barry nods, his interest piqued. "Yes, sir. I can keep a secret, sir."

"Captain Snart's looking at you."

Barry freezes.

No.

_No!_

How - did he know - how could he know - Cold _couldn't_ have figured Barry's identity out so quickly - are the others in danger? Joe? Iris? The STAR Labs team?

Barry needs to warn them. Cold could be going after them even now - there could be warrants - charges – shit, even just accessory after the fact or conspiracy could be enough to put them in prison - why hadn't Barry _thought_ about any of that, why hadn't _any_ of them thought about it - 

"It has to do with your leave of absence," Singh says, oblivious to Barry's rising panic. "Now, I've tried to tell him that you're not involved with the Families -"

"The _Families_?!" Barry exclaims, abruptly derailed from his prior line of thought. "I would _never_ work with – wait. He thinks I'm working with the _Families_?"

"Nine months is about as much time as it would take someone to get in through the ranks as a blood-sworn Family man, if they went at it intensively enough," Singh says. "And Captain Snart would know that better than most."

The Families.

The Families, not the Flash.

Captain Cold doesn't know yet. 

Captain Cold _doesn't know yet_.

He's just made a lucky guess, investigating both Barry Allen and the Flash at the same time. 

Lucky, or maybe Joe is right and the guy really is investigating everyone all the time. 

"- and that's why you need to tread carefully for once, you hear me, Allen? You're a good kid, you do good work, important work, but you're _reckless_ ; you always have been. I don't want to lose my on-site CSI to an IA investigation, okay?"

"Okay," Barry says.

Singh pins him with a look. "I'm serious, Allen. If you go down, even on charges ultimately found to be false, all of your cases will be reopened and reexamined for any mistake, intentional or otherwise, and anything they find could be used to put criminals back out on the street where they can start hurting people again. Snart's already sent some of your cases to forensics to be looked over."

Barry's back straightens in offense. He's not corrupt. He's not working with the Families. And he'd _never_ fake his work! "I stand behind my results, sir."

"And your results stand behind you," Singh agrees. "I don't think he's found anything there - he said something about some weird centrifuge results, but nothing that'd affect the analysis -"

...oops. 

Barry has been using his speed powers to do the analysis and get the results he'd normally have to wait to use the centrifuge for, especially when the office's sole machine is busy on something else. He hadn't realized that it would be noticeable, though of course he should have. He knows very well that every machine of that type leaves its own special trace, working at a different speed, a different set of kinks, a recognizable pattern - Barry's job is literally based on uncovering little details like that.

Of course, Barry also didn't realize that anyone would ever look at his tests for anything other than the end result.

He's going to have to stop cutting corners. 

...when did Barry start cutting corners, anyway? Wasn't that what he got so pissed off at Dibny about, the cheating, the laziness, the corruption? 

Crap. Maybe this Captain Cold guy has a point about the CCPD needing to shape up.

(But if he's right about the CCPD, then what does that say about the Flash..?)

"- but either way, I want to know that you're taking me seriously," Singh says. "No searches on Captain Snart. No extracurricular investigations, no mysterious sick days, none of it, and _certainly_ none of those stunts like you used to pull with pretending something is an official investigation. You get me? Those are all on your record if someone looks hard enough, and someone's looking. You want to get through this, you need to be clean and you need to be hands off. Understood?"

Barry looks Singh straight in the eyes. "Yes, sir. I understand."

And he means it, too.

Singh seems to get that, because he relaxes. "Good. Dismissed, Allen. And make sure that that paperwork's actually in people's inboxes, rather than sitting on your desk."

Barry nods and leaves, feeling more than a bit shaken. 

He joined the CCPD to make things right for his dad, to find out the truth behind what happened to his mom, but it wasn’t _just_ for them. When Barry took his oath to join the force, he meant it with all his heart – he swore that he'd do his job right not just for himself, but for everyone else in the process, too. He became a CSI rather than a cop because he loved science, really loved it, and because he wanted to make sure someone was checking the work of the cops who took the easy answer waiting for them the way they had with his dad. 

When did he start taking the easy way himself? 

Is this how it started, with the little things: not wanting to wait for the office centrifuge, getting lazy with his documentation, fudging a bit on his time entries to account for the fact that he can work so much faster now? With a desire to do good, but to do it faster, better, _easier_?

Is this how Dibny started?

Barry doesn't like that thought. Oh, he wasn't wrong about Dibny - the man planted evidence on someone, for God's sake. That's absolutely unforgivable, a violation of everything the police stand for; when it had been uncovered, the hit to the CCPD's credibility had been a bad one, but not as bad as if Dibny'd actually succeeded in sending the man to jail based on his phony evidence. 

Not as bad as it would have been if it'd been covered up.

But now Barry's starting to wonder about his own actions, too. This Flash thing - he _is_ breaking the law, he knows he is, but on the other hand, he's trying to help people in a way he knows the CCPD can't. Surely that justifies it. Right?

Isn't he helping?

Sure, when Barry's fighting metas, that's one thing. The CCPD doesn't know how to handle them - _though they'd stand a better shot at if they knew about them in the first place_ , the voice in Barry's head whispers, _why are we keeping this a secret_ \- and in those situations, then yes, Barry's powers mean that he’s the one best positioned to act. He doesn't want good people like Joe getting hurt because they're up against things they're not trained for, things they aren’t equipped to handle, people with powers way above their punching level. 

But what about the robberies? D'Angelo - sure, Barry stopped him, and there's a chance the police wouldn't have responded in time to such an audacious attack on a traveling vehicle. But did that make Barry's actions right?

Unlike Captain Cold, Barry's not a cop. He's not authorized to arrest people whenever he sees a crime in progress, not any more than any normal person making a citizen's arrest – and as a CSI, he knows better than most that the rules for those are pretty limited. Maybe he could weasel away the D'Angelo incident, but some of the other ones...

But on the other hand, if Barry can do good in his own way, then isn't he _obligated_ to do it, even if it means he has to work outside the rules?

Yeah. Barry bets that's just what Dibny told himself when he was planting that knife. 

Great. A major crisis of conscience is just what the Flash needs right now.

Barry wonders, a little resentfully, if this is part of Captain Cold's evil plan. 

Or not-so-evil plan. He hasn't actually heard much about Captain Snart that's really bad, just that he's both a stickler for rules and a reckless crazy person and vicious and ruthless and -

To be fair, most of the bad stuff Barry's heard has been from cops angry that one of their own is being investigated, no matter how just the cause. Surely if they realize that the cause is just, they'll stop being so...

No, they won't.

They won't stop being angry, the way they've never entirely warmed back up to Barry after the whole Dibny thing. The only reason Barry's even halfway as accepted as he is? It’s because Joe ran some serious interference on his behalf, pleading childhood trauma as an excuse. Barry knows that to be true, even though he prefers not to think about it. 

He sighs.

"Is the sightseeing good, wherever it is in your head that you've drifted off to now?" 

Barry turns with a smile. "Iris! What are you doing here?"

Iris is beaming, the honest joy in her face making her glow. She's radiant and beautiful and everything Barry's ever wanted. "Oh, you know, catching up with people," she says, waving a hand. "And something I can't quite tell you about yet, so don't even ask."

"Scout's honor," Barry promises.

"You were never a scout, Barry Allen," Iris teases. "You okay? You were pretty out of it."

"Oh, it's nothing," Barry says. "I just got called in to talk to Singh - late paperwork, you know -"

"You get going on that paperwork, then!" she exclaims. "Shoo, shoo!"

"Iris!" Barry laughs.

"But no, seriously, I'm just passing by," she says. "I promised Dad I'd pick something up for him, you know the drill, but I have to run as soon as I find him."

"He's in the back," Barry says. "With Ballistics, I think."

"You're the best, Bar," Iris says, unaware of the pang that causes in Barry's chest. "Say, what're you doing tonight? Me and Eddie are planning to check out that new art installation in the park -"

"Oh, man, you know I'd love to -" There is literally nothing Barry would like less than to gatecrash one of Eddie and Iris' dates. "- but I have plans."

Iris looks skeptical.

Somewhat justifiably.

"Really!" Barry says, glad that, for once, he actually does have plans. "I'm meeting someone for dinner."

Iris' smile broadens. "A _special_ someone?"

"...maybe," Barry allows. "But not yet; we're still just getting to know each other!"

"You'll have to tell me everything," Iris says. "Is it Felicity?"

"No - Iris, I told you already, we're just friends -"

Iris makes a not-entirely-believing noise. "Sure," she says. "Anyway, I really do have to run. You free for lunch, then? By then I should have permission to talk about some news that I _really_ want to share - and I think you're going to like it, too!"

"Really? What -"

"No way," Iris says. "Wait until later."

"You and your surprises," Barry says fondly, then he goes upstairs and he sits down and he works. 

For once, he doesn't rush through his day, daydreaming of things he could be doing as the Flash. He doesn’t stare at the clock, he doesn’t play on his phone, he doesn’t leave in the middle of the day to go train himself to be faster – he focuses on doing what he’s supposed to do.

It’s his job, his stupid frustrating wonderful important job, and he likes what he does.

When did he let that get eclipsed by the Flash?

Wells texts him after a while, asking where he is. When Barry explains that he’s at work, Wells asks why he doesn’t just speed through his work then sneak out for a few hours to train his speed some more, the way he's been doing on a nearly daily basis these last few weeks. 

Barry winces, thinking about it. He’s been treating his day job like a joke, like it was something he did on the side while he focused entirely on being the Flash, and that’s not fair to the people he’s supposed to be working for – the men and women whose lives could be irrevocably altered based on what facts he’s able to prove or disprove in his lab.

People like his dad.

No, Barry can’t just go play superhero all the time. This is important, too.

He texts Wells back, explaining that he needs to catch up on some work things he's been neglecting.

Wells takes a while to understand, which Barry really can’t blame him for – Barry’s been showing up religiously for Wells’ tests and experiments and suggestions on how Barry can get ever faster – but it’s a little annoying that Barry has to reiterate three times that _yes_ , his job is important, yes it’s _just as important_ as getting faster as the Flash, no, he’s _not_ coming to STAR Labs even if there's been a new meta sighting, not until there’s actual evidence of the meta doing something wrong, so please _don't_ call unless people are actually in _imminent_ danger. 

He ends up texting something a little snippier than he really meant it to be, saying something about how getting faster isn’t exactly his top priority all the time and that Wells needs to respect that, but eventually his message gets through and Wells apologizes for pushing.

With that done, Barry goes back to focusing on doing his work well and doing his work _right_.

He - 

He has a lot of fun, actually. 

It's not just the pride he gets from obtaining results, but rather the actual fun of doing science. Taking down results, thinking about them, analyzing them, selecting what process would be best to put them through rather than just running the standard tests and calling it a day -

He even calls the main CSI building to ask some of his CSI colleagues about a weird result he's been getting from a few different crime scenes. 

"Barry!" Gila exclaims in an ear-piercing shriek of excitement. Not surprising; Gila always did believe that conversations were ideally had at capslock volume. "Well, this is a surprise!"

"We were starting to think we should rename you MIA Allen instead of CSI Allen," Andre jokes. Looks like Barry’s on speakerphone.

"What's new in cop-land?" Terri asks. It’s always hard to tell over the phone, but Barry thinks they’re feeling more feminine today than masculine; he’ll try to keep that in mind. "Bored and begging to come back to Scienceland Central City yet?"

"Every time I call, I remember that you're all a bunch of jerks," Barry teases, immediately at ease. He's always gotten along surprisingly great with his fellow CSIs, even if he’s the only on-site crime scene tech stationed at this precinct while the rest of them are busy being forensic investigative scientists in the suburbs. "Must be a side-effect of being stuck out in the boonies, huh?"

"Suburbs," Gila sniffs, clearly not offended in the slightest. "Stuck out in the _suburbs_. At a high-end fully-equipped CSI laboratory with all the fun toys in the world, let me remind you."

"You ought to come out to visit us sometime," Terri says. "We've got a whole pile of new equipment named after you."

Barry laughs.

"No, really," Andre says. "The city paid for it in the name of improving workplace safety after you had your accident at work - like anyone could predict a lightning strike."

"Or the Accelerator explosion," Barry agrees.

"No, that could have been predicted," Terri says, voice suddenly intense. "There were signs - workplace norms being ignored, protests overridden, sudden dismissals in clear retaliation -"

"Whoa, whoa, where's this come from?" Barry asks, taken aback. Terri's one of the best forensic accounting experts he's ever met; they could have any job they wanted at any major institution, but, like Barry, only ever wanted to be a CSI.

"Terri's pet project," Gila says. "Proving that the Accelerator explosion was intentional."

A shiver goes down Barry's back. "No, you don't understand," he says. "It was an _accident_ \- things were definitely overlooked, yes, Wells said as much in his press conference last week -"

"Oh, right, _that_ whole claptrap," Andre says scornfully. "I bet you dollars to donuts that he only did that because some whistle-blower came forward." 

Technically, yes, it had been after Hartley Rathaway had made those accusations – and tried to blow up STAR Labs and part of the city with his sonic blasters – but –

"I lost friends in that explosion," Terri says, still angry. "Cars that crashed, fire patrols and ambulances that never made it to their destinations, people that just disappeared - it was bad. And I was depressed, but there wasn't anything I could do about it because it was just a tragic accident. I wanted to reassure myself that at least they did everything they could - except they didn't. Their construction timeline is unreal - _fourteen_ missed safety tests - evidence of bribery -"

"Bribery?" Barry asks, a sharp pang in his chest. It's like everywhere he goes, there's corruption all around him. And yes, he knows that Central City has something of a reputation in that line, but he'd always tried to keep himself clean...

"Oh yeah, definitely," Terri says. "Property board approvals, safety inspectors, the works; I've got transfers out of Harrison Wells' private accounts that match up perfectly. But no one wants to do anything because -" And their voice turns sticky-sweet-sarcastic. "- hasn't he been punished _enough_ , he broke his back, he lost his reputation, oh no, must be just _awful_ sitting there being a multi-millionaire -"

"I know Wells," Barry protests. "He's sincerely remorseful."

"You _would_ think so, B," Terri says. "You've always been the nicest one of us."

"No, I mean, I _actually_ know him - I'm friends with some of the STAR Labs employees -"

"Bring them to one of our science parties, then," Gila says. "We've missed you, you know! It's like you don't have time for us since you woke up from your coma - which, don't get me wrong, you must have a million doctor's visits -"

He doesn't, not really. And sure, they're only work friends, but he still used to like hanging out with them - all of them at the misfit table, Andre sometimes joked - 

"I'll introduce you," Barry promises. Cisco and Caitlin are misfits and science nerds, too; they'll fit right in. It'll be great. "You'll love them."

"I'm sure we will," Andre says. "Why'd you call, anyway? I assume it wasn't to shoot the shit on company time."

"No, no," Barry says. "I’m being good for once, really! I called about something I found in those disappearances cases, the ones that got sent up to me because someone started thinking might be connected, you know? Anyway, there's a residue in the dirt surrounding each of the scenes that I can't seem to place -"

"Oooh, you mean Chemical X?" Gila interrupts.

"Wait," Barry says. "Is that a Powerpuff Girls reference?"

"Gila found it first, so she had naming rights," Andre says, long-suffering. "Anyway, we know what you mean - it's been spotted all over the city, near these disappearances, possibly elsewhere, and it doesn't match up to anything we're familiar with."

"Tar made from jet engine exhaust is a weirdly close match," Gila says. "But it has similarities to charcoal and to skid marks, too! It's so weird. It's not like there's a jet plane running through the streets of Central City."

Barry looks at his feet with a sudden suspicion. "What about the Streak?"

"Urban legend," Andre says immediately.

"It is _not_ , you old skeptic!" Gila shouts back.

"You _had_ to get them started on that again," Terri groans. "Ugh, Barry, why? I'm the one who has to sit with them."

"Sorry," Barry says, managing not to grin only because he's pretty sure Terri would know, somehow. He's not sorry at all.

"Anyway," Terri continues, "putting aside the 'is it/isn't it' debate, what we do know for sure is that the residue started appearing around crime sites seven, maybe eight, months ago, well before the Streak made its first appearance."

Huh. Seven months ago, Barry was still in a coma. So it's not him. 

Maybe another meta?

"Anyway, we're glad you called," Gila says after she's exhausted her well-worn (barely) muffled argument with Andre. "Weirdo residue is right up your alley, Allen. How's that supernatural blog going, anyway?"

Barry can't help but smile a little. He's almost entirely forgotten about that blog. He hasn't had much time for anything but Flash stuff lately, not really...

There's a loud knock on his door. "Oops," Barry says. "Reality calls."

"Boooo," the other three chorus. 

Barry laughs. "I will take a closer look at that residue, though, run some extra tests," he promises. 

"Come down to the lab sometime! You can try out the new machines!"

"Sounds like a plan."

"Oh, and Allen?" Terri says. "One more thing. Could you check through the archives over there? I wanna know how far back this residue really goes - seven months ago just means that that's as far back as we've been looking, nothing more."

"Sure," Barry agrees, though he doubts he'll find anything pre-dating the Accelerator explosion if it is in fact a meta. "Later, guys."

He hangs up and turns to face - Eddie?

"Oh, crap," Barry says. "Lunch with Iris! I'm so sorry, I totally forgot -"

His lateness thing has never been about his speed, after all.

"No, no," Eddie says, holding up his hands with a smile. "That's not - well, actually, that _is_ why I'm here, sort of. Lunch is cancelled on account of - and I swear I'm quoting Iris here - West family drama."

Barry can't help a grin. "Oh boy, that bad? Did Joe try something else to try to tank your relationship?"

"Nope, it's a new one," Eddie says, grinning back and pulling a chair over. "Mind if I take refuge here for a bit? They're still fighting downstairs right next to my desk, so I took my break early..."

"Sure," Barry says. As he's discovered over the past few weeks, he actually does like Eddie, despite every Iris-related reason not to. "Something new, huh? What is it?"

"Her new project. I warned her Joe wouldn't take it as well as she thought he would," Eddie says, shaking his head. 

“Sounds juicy,” Barry says fondly. “Is this what she was going to reveal over lunch?”

“Yep, exactly that. I’m sure she won’t mind if I spill the beans, though, if you don’t mind hearing it from me instead of her..?”

“If it means staying out of a West family fight?” Barry asks with a laugh. “Spill away.”

Eddie grins. "Okay, you know how he's been leaning on her about that Streak - uh, Flash blog of hers? Saying it's dangerous and she should stop writing it because it might make her a target because this Flash guy could be anyone?"

That last one wasn't exactly Joe's reason, for obvious reasons, but Barry wasn't about to say so. He knows all of Joe's arguments along those lines; he'd used many of the same ones himself to try to convince Iris to stay out of the superhero reporting business.

Hadn’t worked, of course. Another massive Iris-related failure he really shouldn’t have been surprised by...

"I thought you said it was a _new_ argument they were having?" he says dryly.

"It is, I swear," Eddie says. "Anyway, Iris thought he'd be happy because she finally agreed that she shouldn't be working on reporting Flash related things without adequate protection."

That _does_ sound like something that would make Joe happy.

It also doesn't exactly sound like Iris.

Barry says as much. Eddie laughs. "Yeah, well, I think Joe was going for more 'stop writing anything about it' and less 'keep writing about it, just with police support'."

A chill goes down Barry's spine. "Police support? What do you mean?"

"Captain Singh's got me on the new Flash task force that Captain Snart is running," Eddie says. "Did you hear...?”

Barry nods.

“Anyway, we were talking a bit about it, Captain Snart and I, and he ended up going to talk to Iris himself, since she's one of the few people other than him that's actually spoken with this Flash guy. And, long story short, he’s agreed that she can help us out as part of the task force – she's actually going to be working with us in a consulting role. A full-time, getting-paid consulting role...it’s her first big break into real journalism!"

Eddie beams when he concludes the sentence, clearly proud of Iris for having been offered an official role like that, but Barry's too busy gaping at him to share in the joy that he would normally have upon hearing about Iris’ career finally getting moving. 

He'd been worried about Captain Cold getting to Iris, maybe even had a few daydreams about rescuing her from some extremely low-key and non-threatening but maybe mildly traumatizing kidnapping, but he'd never imagined he'd get to her like _this_. 

"Hold up," Barry says, swallowing through a suddenly dry throat. "You're telling me that _Iris_ agreed to join an anti-Flash task force? I thought - I thought she liked him!"

"She does," Eddie agrees, clearly slightly confused by Barry's admittedly odd reaction. "Captain Snart cut a deal with her - well, honestly I think he was planning on doing it anyway and just used his talk with her to formalize it. The task force is designed to analyze the Flash's actions and recommend a solution. If Iris is right and he's not doing damage, he'll get leniency based on the idea that he's just being overzealous citizen rather than an actual criminal. But if Captain Snart is right and he's involved in criminal activity, then he gets arrested and faces the full force of the law."

"And Iris agreed?"

"She didn't see any reason not to," Eddie points out. "She really believes in this Flash guy."

"So she's helping the police hunt him down?!"

"It's his only chance of clearing his name, Barry," Eddie says with a slight frown. "He might even be able to work out some deal with the city this way, get some official backing or something like that. Otherwise, if he keeps doing what he's doing after being warned off by the police, then he doesn't have even the excuse of ignorance anymore. He's breaking the law, Barry. I know it doesn't always seem that way - he's right out of the comic books, isn't he? - but it's like that vigilante in Starling, the one who murders people -"

"The Arrow doesn't murder people anymore," Barry protests weakly, still reeling.

"And, what, that somehow excuses the murders he _already_ committed while he was still going as the Hood?" Eddie says skeptically. 

“We don’t even know if this Arrow guy is the same guy as the Hood,” Barry points out, feeling a bit guilty, because he happens to know that they _are_ the same person.

Also, that's a good point about those past murders...

“There can’t be that many super-athletic archers willing to become vigilantes,” Eddie objects. He has a point, though Barry’s pretty sure Oliver’s mentioned there being at least three or four. Though now that Barry thinks about it, that does seem like an unusually high number of people to interested in a very specific combination of parkour, martial arts and archery... "Either way, just because some people think they're above the law to the point that they can take it into their own hands doesn't mean they _should_ be doing it."

"But - but what if the things these people are fighting are something the police _can't_ fight?"

"That's why this task force is analytical in nature," Eddie explains. "If we figure out that this Flash guy really is doing stuff that we can't - which I personally don't think is the case, but Iris disagrees with me - then Captain Snart is willing to cut him a break and say he's been working under a citizens' arrest sort of deal. Maybe even hire him to work with the CCPD. But first we have to find him."

It's a good plan. A solid plan. 

If it wasn't being suggested by a supervillain, Barry might even be tempted to agree with it. 

It's not that he has anything against working with the CCPD, after all - it's not even a bad idea, he's not sure why Team Flash didn't think of it - but the fact that Captain Cold is involved...

Not good. 

"Anyway, you know how Joe feels about Captain Snart," Eddie says ruefully. "He nearly bit _my_ head off about joining the task force - right before he turned around and asked me to keep him updated about it. But either way, Iris thought Joe would be happy to hear that she'd have police protection in all future dealings with the Flash, but instead he blew his lid when he found out about it, probably because the police protection is Captain Snart."

Yeah, Barry's not feeling too happy about that either. 

It'd never even occurred to him that he was taking Iris' unflinching support of the Flash - even in the face of his own half-hearted arguments against the Flash that he'd made in the hopes that she'd drop the blog thing like Joe wanted - for granted. 

He just - it's _Iris_. She's always been on his side, even when she didn't know it was him.

And now she's been tricked into being on the supervillain's side, instead.

Barry doesn't even know what Captain Cold _wants_!

And worst of all, what if Barry's sinking suspicions are right and Captain Cold's _not_ a supervillain? What if he's exactly what he claims to be: a cop worried about a vigilante gone wild? A vigilante with unimaginable powers?

Wasn't that why Cisco built the cold gun, after all? He'd been worried about Barry turning out to be just like all those other metas, the ones that abused their powers and went evil; it was only after he got to know Barry that he realized that Barry wouldn't do that. 

The CCPD don't know the Flash is Barry. They barely even have confirmed proof of his existence. No wonder they're suspicious!

And, more to the point, why hasn't Barry thought of any of this? He's a CSI! He works with the police! He knows most of the laws by heart! But he's just been going along with it, not thinking about it, feeling like it was just out of a comic book, just like Eddie said, instead of thinking about the real world applications of what he was doing - 

His phone goes off. 

"Sorry," he says to Eddie, who waves a permissive hand, and answers. "Barry Allen."

"Barry, we need you to come down to STAR Labs right now," Wells says urgently. "Something's come up on Cisco's screens. He's not in right now - I sent him out for something, but I'll go myself to find him and bring him back - we need your help!"

"I'll be there ASAP," Barry says, alarmed by the unprecedented concern in Wells' voice. He hangs up and looks at Eddie.

"Guess lunch would've been canceled anyway," Eddie says with a laugh. "I'll tell the boys you took a half-day off, yeah?"

"You're the best," Barry tells him, simultaneously wishing it wasn't the case so that he could be properly jealous and also happy for Iris' sake that it _is_ true. "Thanks, man."

"No problem."

The second Eddie is out the door, Barry is in the Flash suit and running towards STAR Labs. 

He's got a crisis of conscience, yes, but his friends might be in danger; his crisis of conscience can wait.

Right now, they need him to be the Flash.

He runs.

And as he runs, someone else suddenly runs, too, runs at his speed, runs faster than his speed, runs right next to him, turns his face to look at Barry, his face, a face that Barry knows from his nightmares -

The Man in Yellow.

The man who killed Barry's mother. 

He's back.


	7. 7

"You look like crap," is the first thing out of Len's mouth when he sees Allen.

And people wonder why Len doesn't date much.

In his defense, Allen does in fact look like crap - circles under his eyes, shoulders up by his ears, twitchy expression. 

He's also nearly thirty minutes late, but Len's seen his personnel file. He's not surprised.

"Sorry," Allen says. 

"Don't be sorry," Len says. "Just forgive me for shoving my foot into my mouth in an act of impressive crutch-wielding contortionism."

That gets a smile, but a half-hearted one.

"Do you want to cancel?" Len asks. He doesn't want to - he arrived at Jitters fully prepared to brutally crush any burgeoning feelings he might have in favor of surreptitiously sounding Allen out about what he's up to at STAR Labs, and he doesn't want all that preparation to go to waste.

Not that it isn't going to waste regardless, because Allen looks so stressed out and pathetic about it (and yet somehow cute?) that it's going straight past Len's carefully constructed defenses into the soft underbelly part of him that likes to feed stray cats and pet sad-looking dogs. 

He wants to punch whoever made Allen look this way.

He's aware that there's a good chance that person is him. 

It doesn't stop the feeling.

"No," Allen says firmly, smiling through his evident tiredness. "I just - I had a terrible day, that's all. I've been looking forward to this all week. I promise I'll still be good company."

Len smiles at him. "You're always good company." He didn't mean that to come out quite as sincere as it did. "Let's go, then."

Luckily for Len's leg and back, the restaurant Danvers booked isn't far from Jitters. He's using the crutches again; he doesn't want to inflict his braces-induced turtle-walk on someone he's trying to impress, even if only for a limited time. At least with crutches no one questions the limp. 

"This is a nice place," Allen says, sounding a little impressed. His shoulders are still up by his ears, though.

Before Len can think through what he's doing, he reaches over and puts his hand on the flat of Allen's back, right between the shoulder blades, the way he used to do to Mick when Mick was stressed. "Take a deep breath," he instructs. 

Allen's cheeks flush, but he does, and when he exhales his shoulders go down, some of that terrible pressure unwinding as he slowly relaxes. 

"There," Len says with satisfaction. "Much better."

Allen smiles at him.

Len finds himself smiling back.

He also, after a few moments, realizes he hasn't removed his hand.

Goddamnit, the man's a target! Stop flirting!

Len pulls his hand back. "After you," he says to the obviously disappointed Allen. 

They're led to a nice secluded corner table, which Len appreciates and suspects he can thank Danvers for. 

"Okay," Len says once they're seated. "Tell me about that terrible day of yours."

Allen looks surprised, then flustered, then protests, "Oh, no, I wouldn't want to bore you -"

"If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't have asked," Len says firmly, crushing the thought that Allen looks particularly delicious when he's flustered and red-cheeked with equal firmness. "Come on, spill; you clearly need to get it off your chest."

Allen's eyes are wide like a deer in the headlights, like the idea of sharing his feelings honestly is utterly foreign to him, but Len just stares at him, calm and collected, letting the silence stretch out between them until Allen's defenses collapse. 

"I had the _worst_ day," Allen finally confesses with a sigh. "There's just - so much going on -"

He pauses when the waiter swings by to take their orders, then Len waves for him to continue.

"Like, just - my boss called me in to yell at me and he was _right_ , there's this guy targeting me right now and I don't know _why_ , and then I found out that my best friend got involved in - uh, something, something bad, and because I already agreed to keep her out of the loop for her own protection I can't even explain to her why it's a bad idea, and last but certainly not least, I _finally_ got a lead on the guy who killed my mom and I lost him because I wasn't good enough to catch him!"

Len blinks, taken aback by the sudden rush of words and the way Allen's face got all pink with emotion and how he gestured wildly while he was talking.

Not to mention the content of what he was saying.

"I'm sorry," Allen says, calming down a little, "I didn't mean to dump all this on you -"

"No, no, it's fine," Len says, still processing all those words. "Back up a minute - you got a lead on - did you say the guy who _killed your mom_?"

Allen flushes. "Uh, yeah. Sorry, I know that's not really first date material, but - yeah. My mom died when I was eleven and my dad, uh, my dad's in prison for doing it, but he _didn't_ , I saw who did, but no one ever believed me, but I'm telling you he didn't do it -"

"What, Doc Allen? Of course he didn't," Len replies, still working a bit on automatic. Then he realizes what he just said and just barely staves off a wince. 

He's too used to his criminal persona, the one who knew Iron Heights and the people inside it like the back of his hand and could recite facts about just about any of them at the drop of a hat – the problem, of course, was that it was more than a persona, it was the person he'd been, in fact, for most of his life. He’d slipped right back into it without noticing.

Allen blinks owlishly at him. "You - know him?"

"Well, assuming your dad is the lifer in Iron Heights with the last name of Allen, yeah, I know him," Len says, because the only way to go when you’re caught in an unfortunate slip is forward. Contextualize, contextualize, contextualize... "I was in there for a short while - long story - and he was - well. I liked him. Didn't realize you were related till you told the story."

A smile spreads on Allen's face like the sun breaking through crowds. "You liked him? Really?"

"Yeah, he’s good people," Len says, because it happens to be true. "And, for what it's worth, he's one of the only people that I met in there that I actually believed when he said he was innocent."

Allen is really smiling now. "Really? You're not just saying that?"

"Yeah, I mean it," Len says, helpless before that smile. "Like I said, he's good people. Always wanting to help people. I couldn't square it with what he was accused of - he didn't seem like the DV type."

"To be fair, there isn't really a _type_ -"

"There is," Len says firmly. "It's subtle, but it's there. They're not all stereotype angry assholes, some of 'em are charismatic and charming as a cover, but if you know the tells, you can generally spot 'em." 

Allen's looking at Len - and in particular the crutch resting on the table at his side - with a measure of honest concern in his eyes, so Len adds, "Nothing recent, don't worry. My dad was a dick when I was younger, yeah, but I'm well rid of him - haven't seen him for years."

That, too, is true. Hardly a rare story, and after these last few months with the police who all know, Len's pretty used to talking about it without a wince. 

Allen nods his understanding. "I'm sorry you went through that at all, but I'm glad that it's in your past now. Can I ask..?"

He nods at the crutch. 

"Accident in a line of work I don't do anymore," Len says shortly. He hasn't come up with a good cover story for that yet, mostly because he thought his undercover days were behind him. He decides to shift topics, going back to asking, "Anyway, you say you got a lead on the guy that really did it? Tell me about it."

Allen nods, clearly thinking something through - Len has the distinct and sinking suspicion that the combination of mentioning Iron Heights and a 'former line of work' has given Allen the idea that Len's an ex-con, which has the advantage of being halfway true - and eventually deciding, quite evidently, to give Len the benefit of the doubt. 

Good man. 

Len's going to hate to have to arrest him.

"When I was eleven, I saw the guy that killed my mom," Allen finally says. "He appeared like - like a bolt of lightning, unreal; he was gone just as quickly, and no one ever believed me that he was there. But he was, and I saw him. And earlier today, right around lunchtime, I - I saw him again."

Len straightens in his chair and leans forward.

"He - he _smirked_ at me," Allen confesses. "I ran after him, and he let me - he _let_ me, because I was going as fast as I could but he was _faster_ , so much faster, and after a few minutes of playing with me he just left me behind in the dust -"

"Are you sure it's him?" Len asks, intrigued. He hadn't paid much attention to the Doc Allen thing - he'd always thought the guy was innocent, sure, but he'd assumed it was a robbery gone wrong getting pinned on the husband, with all the extenuating evidence long gone - but it's clearly still a live issue for Allen. "I'm sure there's no way you'd forget the face, but by your own account it's been over a decade -"

Allen is shaking his head. "It was him," he says firmly, his mouth twisting. "He - he even said, 'Remember me?' while I was chasing him. He - he laughed at me - told me I wasn't fast enough - and then he was gone before I could say anything. Gone without a trace before I could even blink."

Allen falls quiet, remembering, stewing, and normally Len would try to say something but he's busy putting two and two together. 

The man who murdered Allen's mother - appearing in a bolt of lightning - the references to running - a sudden disappearance mid-sentence despite Allen's best attempts to keep up, even given the Allen not exactly being a slouch in the fitness department - 

There's only one reasonable conclusion.

Allen's talking about the Flash. 

Allen thinks the Flash killed his mother, all those years ago, and whether or not he's right, this is the best news Len's heard all week, because the Flash is centered at STAR Labs, and Allen's suspicious disappearance is centered at STAR Labs, and if Allen faked a nine-month coma to go infiltrate STAR Labs in an attempt to hunt down his mother's killer, then he might be guilty of insurance fraud, but _that means he's not corrupt_!

And that, in turns, means that Len might actually be able to put down that everlasting vigilance of his. To trust that Allen's cheerful, optimistic, hopeful external demeanor advertises an interior that matches. Maybe, even, to trust _Allen_.

Even with Len's heart.

The rational side of Len's brain takes over at that point, reminding Len that his investigation is far from complete, that corruption remains the simplest possible explanation for everything, that he shouldn't let himself get carried away. Len's survived all these years by listening to that rational side, but for once, he _really_ wants to ignore it. 

He wants to just tell Allen the whole story: tell him what Len does for a living, tell him all of his fears about Mick and the coma and why that brought him to Allen, tell him how Allen proved himself despite Len’s horrible paranoia; he wants to tell Allen that it’s okay, that he’s not alone; wants to tell him that he's hunting the Flash, too, and to offer his help and the full force of the police department to Allen in his quest for justice.

But no. 

Investigate first, verify first, and then and only then do you trust.

Len’s learned that the hard way.

"I'm going to get him, though," Allen says, his face going determined, though his eyes are still distant. He's still facing down the Flash in his memories. "And I'm going to get him the _right_ way, too, so that my dad can go free as an innocent man. No cheats. No shortcuts. No laziness." 

"Hear, hear," Len says, approving. There's a burst of paranoia that says that this is exactly what Allen would say if he knew what Len did for a living, if he was trying to get on Len's good side, but it's easy enough to shunt aside. Allen just doesn’t seem like a good enough liar for that. "If you do it the wrong way, you'll never make it stick. There's nothing worse than seeing someone awful, someone who's done awful things, go free when they shouldn’t, all because of some stupid mistake made by some asshole who couldn't wait."

Allen looks at him in silent, curious question.

Normally, Len would deflect, the wound still too raw, too open, but his heart is singing with possibilities previously discarded as impossible, and it makes his tongue looser than it should be.

Len touches his side, an absent gesture he doesn’t notice he’s doing until he’s already done it. "My -" Partner. Criminal partner. No, they weren't that anymore, were they? That died the second Mick discovered Len was a cop. "My friend. He saved my life, and - and before I could even thank him, he got attacked. I don't know who it was that ordered it -" 

By which he means, what cop told the Families about him, kicking off the terrible days that lead inevitably in his memories to Mick's attack. 

"- but they did find the asshole thug who actually threw the petrol bomb. They took the guy that did it into custody, all wrapped up in a pretty bow, and then it came out that the cop that did the arresting was taking bribes from the Families and the courts threw out all the evidence. And so the guy that did it walked."

It'd all been planned to go that way, too; that's what soured Len the most when he finally struggled his way out of bed and back into the loop. The cop who'd led the investigation was unnaturally green, brand new to the force with no allies and no commitments, and she'd gone down for corruption easy as anything. They'd fired her from the CCPD, of course, but she'd started driving a Porsche to the courthouse, where due to the fact that it was, on the face of it, her first offense, she'd faced surprisingly minimal charges.

At least, she'd been facing minimal charges until Len took down the DA charging her in his first big sting as head of IA and replaced her with an old veteran with no patience and even less mercy.

That particular corrupt cop, the one who'd agreed to sabotage her career to let Mick's would-be assassin go free, is looking at a hell of a lot more prison time now, and Len had taken great satisfaction in personally accompanying the bailiff to seize all her assets as the proceeds of a crime.

The Porsche included. 

Allen looks appalled. "And - what happened to your friend?"

Len's glee at the memory of vengeance successfully extracted dies at once. 

He shakes his head mutely, unable to say anything more - Mick, oh, _Mick_ , lying alone in a hospital bed, kept alive only by machines...

"I'm sorry," Allen says, and his voice is warm as if he really means it. He reaches out and puts a hand on Len's, and his hand is warm. "I really am."

Len shrugs, keeping his eyes down on the table. The guilt eats away at him - why should he be having fun when Mick isn't yet awake? Assuming, that is, that he ever will wake?

"I - I've had some experience with that, too," Allen says. "Police corruption, I mean. Nothing nearly as bad as what happened to you, of course."

That manages to get through Len's gloom, causing Len to lift his head to look at Allen with curiosity. Allen isn't going to admit to corruption _now_ , is he? Not now, when Len is finally convinced he might actually be innocent? 

Allen makes a face not unlike biting into a lemon. It's clearly not his favorite story, and far from a favorite memory; it's evident that he's only sharing it to make Len feel better, which Len appreciates. "I'd say that at least nobody died, but technically the story starts with a murder investigation," he says. "Nobody I know, at least? Anyway, it was a guy on the murder investigations squad. Only a year or two older than me, but he went straight into the cops where I detoured for grad school for the CSI thing - you know I'm a CSI, right? Okay, good, wasn't sure if I'd mentioned it - anyway, that meant that he was a fair bit more senior than I was when it happened."

"What happened?" Len asks, though he suspects he can guess. Corruption happens in a million forms, but for murder it's usually either about letting a guilty target go or making sure a suspicious target doesn't.

"He was convinced that the husband killed his wife, but there wasn't any evidence linking the husband to the crime," Allen says. "Or, well, there wasn't any evidence until Dibny found a knife with the husband's fingerprints on it."

Len nods, unsurprised. "Of course he did. I don't suppose he was smart enough to match forensics first."

Allen's smile is remarkably bitter, in a way that reminds Len a bit too much of what he sees in the mirror every morning. It doesn't fit quite right on Allen's face. "Actually, yes, he was. He was smart and good at his job, so he actually did do a decent job of making it all seem like it fit, but I'd been following the case very closely - I hated how quickly they all decided that the husband did it, even though they might have been right in that particular instance, the husband was a real scumbag - and I just couldn't believe Dibny found evidence that somehow got missed after three sweeps of the area, including my own. So I ran a few extra tests, just to be sure, and, well. I ended up proving that it was the wrong type of knife. And that it was almost certainly planted deliberately."

"What did you do?" Len asks. He knows how easy it is for cops to just let these things go, especially if it's one of their own, and to ascribe it to mere youthful enthusiasm when in fact it suggested something far darker. If a cop was willing to fix the evidence in one case, and they got away with it, then why not another? And how many times had they done it successfully before? But instead of considering those questions, the cops just stuck together like blood brothers in a mob: the blue line of solidarity, even in the face of their own corruption...

"I turned the evidence in," Allen says, like there was no choice for him in the matter, like it'd been an easy decision because it was the right decision. "Everyone wanted me to drop it, since it was his first offense, but I kept hounding the DA's office and eventually they looked into it." He makes a face. "The CCPD brass ended up firing Dibny in disgrace over my testimony, but once they did that, the DAs decided to drop the case as essentially moot."

"They didn't want to risk having to reopen all of this Dibny guy's closed cases," Len says, nodding. He's run into more than one DA who's suggested a similar outcome; he solved that by reminding them that he could always resort to the court of public opinion if they wouldn’t go to the regular courts, and if he did the media would tar the DA who was suspiciously unwilling to prosecute right along with the cop who'd committed the crime. That usually did the trick, with the DAs typically deciding to do their goddamn jobs after that. Now they only recommend leniency if there's an actual good reason for it, like a lack of evidence to convict or a potential deal to be made to get someone else higher up.

"I guess," Allen says. 

"How'd you manage to keep it up at work after that?" Len asks, honestly curious. He knows the police department’s ways of dealing with things they don’t like far too well, usually ostracization and none-too-subtle harassment. "Weren't people upset?"

Allen shrugs, but his face is still a touch sour. "I guess," he says. "My foster-father, the guy who took me in after the whole thing with my mom and my dad, he works there and he went to bat for me, I think. I'm pretty sure he told them I was overly sensitive about husband-wife murder cases because of what happened with my parents -"

Len scowls at how patronizing that explanation is. Ugh. If it were him, he'd rather take the scorn - and judging by the way Allen nods in response, Allen agrees.

"He was trying his best to help me," Allen explains, shrugging a little. "It helped stop the comments and stuff. And, I don't know, maybe they were a bit more harsh and unforgiving afterwards? Not so much that it'd get in my way, you know, just - unfriendly. Maybe. I'm not sure, really. To be fair, I wasn't exactly popular to begin with - always too late to everything, too little tact, too weird, and that was _before_ one of them found my blog..."

"You run a blog? About what?"

"Oh, God, no; forget I said anything - please don't look it up, it's awful -"

"Tell me, or I'm going for Google," Len teases. 

"Okay, okay," Allen says, giving in. "So, okay, when I was younger I had this interest in the supernatural..."

Len laughs. He can't help it; it's such a nice, normal interest - weird, yes, but hardly harmful. 

Allen laughs, too, self-effacing and amused. "I was looking for something I wasn't sure existed," he admits. "And when I couldn't find anything via regular routes, I got a little esoteric. But I made lots of friends that way!"

"I'm sure you did," Len says, grinning at him. "You meet people in the weirdest ways on the internet - Mick once got shanghaied into joining a _gardening_ forum, I don't even know how that happened, and that's how he ended up meeting the botany professor that helped my sister get into university -"

"Mick's your friend with the..? The one that - you know, with the corrupt cop?"

Len winces. He hadn't meant to drop Mick's name.

"You were close, huh?" Allen says. He doesn't seem perturbed by Len constantly bringing Mick up, which Len appreciates. 

"Best friends," Len agrees. It's been a problem with his romantic relationships before - some people expected him to focus on them to the exclusion of all others, including his partner, and he wasn't willing to do that. 

Sometimes it ended the relationship, but that’s always been a sacrifice Len was willing to make. Just because some people were too paranoid to realize that platonic bonds were a real thing, an important thing, and not one he was willing to give up for a brand new romance... "Well, we were, anyway. For years and years - over a decade, maybe even two."

"You were? You mean, before...?"

"No, not just that," Len says, unable to keep the regret and bitterness out of his voice. "I'd been keeping something from him, something - something important. I thought I was doing it for his own good, but, well. Yeah. I think, in retrospect, that he would have rather known the truth, even if it put him in danger, because that way he could make an honest decision about whether or not he wanted to stick around, you know? But I took that decision from him because - well, because -"

"Because you didn't want to risk losing him," Allen says quietly. "And maybe you could have told him at the beginning, but you let yourself be convinced not to, and then it felt like it was too late because you had to explain both the original lie and all the lying afterwards, and you knew that it was going to blow up in your face even as you kept digging yourself in deeper, and now you just can't bear the thought of how angry they'll be..."

"Seems like you know what I'm talking about," Len says, looking at Allen with a real curiosity. 

Allen smiles crookedly. "Part two of my terrible day," he admits. "My best friend, Iris. She's - uh - yeah. She's basically perfect and I've been kind of half in love with her _forever_ , except then - well - I was sort of gone for nine months, and now she's dating someone really seriously, and, like, he's great! Really great! I'm so happy for her, really, and I was trying to get over it, except then her dad convinced me to give it one last shot about confessing my feelings because I'd regret it if I never tried it or something like that, except it turns out it was just his latest attempt to break them up -"

" _Ouch_."

"Yeah, it - it wasn't exactly - it didn't go well. To say the least. And then there's this _other_ thing that I'd been keeping from her - her dad made me promise to keep it from her because he was worried she'd get hurt - except then she got involved anyway - like, _really_ involved - and I don't know how to explain it to her that _I'm_ involved without admitting to all the lying -"

Len nods. Allen's not being exactly coherent, but it all fits in with Len's new hypothesis: Allen goes missing for nine months to infiltrate and investigate the Flash's home base without explaining what he's doing, and after he returns, newly sworn in as a member of Harrison Wells' little coterie, he discovers that Iris West - because really, who else could it be? - has taken up writing the Flash blog and even, more recently, joined the new Flash-related task force that Len's running, and he's concerned for her, worried that the Flash will take her out the way he took out Allen's mother.

"Your friend's an adult, Allen," Len reminds him gently. "It's not really your place, or her dad's place, to decide what she does - or who she's dating, for that matter - and you'd never be able keep her from doing something that she's passionate about, even if there is an element of danger. All you can do is make sure she's being as safe as she possibly can be while she goes about it."

"I guess you're right," Allen sighs. "I really can't stop her - trust me, I've tried, and she only doubles down more - but what about the lying part of it? She'll kill me. And I’ll deserve it, too."

"Can't help you there," Len replies with a shrug. "My best friend got nearly murdered before I ever got around to telling him or apologizing, remember."

"Ouch, right. Sorry. At least things with Iris aren't _that_ bad...holy crap, I've just spent the last, like, five minutes talking about my former crush, I am _so sorry_! I'm so bad at this dating thing!"

Len starts laughing, really laughing, laughing like he hasn't in ages, the way almost nobody but Mick and Lisa and sometimes Danvers can get him to do, deep belly laughs that make the gunshot wound in his side throb and he doesn't even care. It's just - it's practically picturesque, how Allen just looks so flustered and horrified at his realization.

"I don't mind," he manages to interject between laughs eventually. "She's still your best friend. She's important - she's always going to be important - and anyway you said she's happily dating someone else. I don't feel threatened or anything."

Allen looks incredibly relieved, and starts laughing as well.

Their waiter picks that minute to arrive with their food, and it's only later, once they've gotten halfway into their meals and their conversation has shifted onto less weighty subjects - the Central City Combines' latest losing streak, which is starting to be record-length - that Len realizes that he just inadvertently admitted that he _is_ interested in dating Allen.

…oops.


	8. 8

Barry's got hearts in his eyes, a song on his lips, and he feels like he could fly.

Not literally, which is a good thing - he can run up sheer building faces if he builds up enough speed, apparently, but flying is still out of the question at the moment, though Cisco, while musing, said something mildly terrifying about the possibility of creating lift using Barry's legs to make a cyclone - but just, you know, metaphorically. 

Okay, yes, his life still sucks in basically every way: Captain Cold is still at large and gunning for _both_ of Barry's personas, Iris is still on the new task force (officially, it's supposed to be an investigative and analytical unit dealing in unusual phenomena in Central, but given its new precinct nickname as the Anti-Flash Task Force, Barry's got his doubts), the Man in Yellow is still out there and Barry's no closer to either catching him or proving his dad's innocence, Barry's still having a crisis of conscience over whether what he's doing as the Flash is the right thing to do or not...

But!

His date with Len was - _amazing_.

Barry's never connected so easily with someone. They talked about - everything. His dad, Iris - Len was so understanding about what Barry was going through, and he opened up, too, about his best friend and his complicated relationship with his sister...

They even root for the same sports teams!

(Okay, Central City only has the ones, but whatever, it's nice to commiserate with someone who understands the sheer euphoric misery of rooting for the worst team in the league...)

Seriously, that might have been the best date of Barry's life, and he's still not sure if Len wants to be more-than-friends or just keep it platonic. 

Barry knows which one he'd prefer.

God, he's still not over how absolutely it was. Barry actually had the chance to talk about Iris, really talked about her instead of lying about the depth of his feelings about her, and instead of being repelled, Len understood.

"She's your anchor," Len told him, a small, fond smirk curling his lips. "Someone fundamental. Someone necessary for you to be you. I get that."

For Len, his first anchor had been his sister. He'd practically raised her; she'd been the center of his world for a long time. Only after she grew up did he make a conscious effort to distance himself - for her own benefit, he said wistfully, to make sure she had the room to spread her wings and fly - but Barry can tell that Len still cares for her deeply.

Just like he cares for his best friend, Mick. That's the one in the hospital, following the incident that Len didn't want to talk about – if Barry's theories about Len's history were right, probably the criminal job gone wrong that ultimately inspired Len to get out of the business and go straight, though of course it could be anything. Len made it very clear that while they were purely platonic, he considered his relationship with Mick to be as important as any other relationship in his life, and that he wouldn't sacrifice it for anything, not even while Mick stayed in the coma.

Barry gets that. He totally gets it, really - it's the same way with him and Iris. Sure, he's also in love with her, but he knows by now that barring something horrific happening that he would never wish on anyone, much less his best friend, he's probably not going to be with her, and, well, he's learning to be okay with that. But even accepting that, in no universe can he imagine a life _without_ Iris, a world where she isn't his best friend and a part of his life. 

Maybe that's why Barry empathizes with Len so strongly over his situation.

God, it's just occurring to him that Iris was in Len's exact situation - Barry in a coma for nine months, with no idea if he'd ever wake up...

No wonder her bond with Eddie is so strong. He was there for her when she really needed someone. 

Yeah, Barry's - no, saying he's okay with it is a lie, but he thinks he's starting to really see a path forward.

That path doesn't lead to the house he'd always dreamed he'd live in, with Iris and their kids calling him Dad and complaining about their day as they settle down to dinner, no, but maybe to something near that: an apartment down the street from Iris' house, swinging by in the afternoon to cries of "Uncle Barry!", Eddie and Iris beckoning him into the living room for homemade smoothies and neighborhood gossip, Eddie looking at Iris with pride and love in his eyes when he thinks she's not looking and Barry watching them both, his heart full, not of jealousy, but of pride and joy that they're letting him be involved...

A pair of hands falling onto his shoulders from behind, a charming smile and a habitually insincere apology about running late after getting caught up at work as Len leans down and presses his lips to Barry's cheek -

Whoa, there, Barry tells himself firmly. _Definitely_ getting ahead of myself there.

Pretty nice to daydream about, though...

"I bet we get another postponement," Detective Lloyd groans in Barry's ear. "What a waste!"

Barry twitches, knocked out of his cheerful musings. 

Right.

He's technically at work. 

Only technically, though - he's at court to testify about one of the crime scenes he examined and the results of the tests he conducted, including the one that led to the defendant's arrest on numerous charges. It isn't Barry's favorite part of his job - far from it - but it's necessary, and he doesn't mind it.

Besides, if he's finished all of his currently ongoing projects by the time court starts, he gets whatever remains of the day after the court hearing off of work without using up any of his (rapidly dwindling) vacation time.

"I think there's a chance we'll be heard today," Barry says encouragingly to the man. He’s not exactly thrilled to be stuck here with Detective Walter Lloyd, the investigating detective assigned to the same case, but it could be worse. They've been on the same case team a few times, Barry and Detective Lloyd - he'd made it clear that they weren't close enough for Barry to get to use 'Walter', but other than that, Barry thought they worked pretty decently together. Lloyd never questioned Barry's results and even sometimes took Barry's suggestions.

Of course, he has a bad habit of always asking Barry to get him his coffee...

"Yeah, maybe," Detective Lloyd says skeptically. "I bet the perp's lawyers are doing this on purpose, getting us called in and then making a whole bunch of motions so we're just stuck out here, waiting..."

"I'm sure that's not it."

"Shows what you know. Hey, were you planning on getting something from the canteen?"

"I wasn't, actually," Barry says, but he's already resigned. 

"Great! Could you get me a coffee? Two sugars, no milk. You're a real pal; I'm dying here."

Barry really wants to tell him to go to hell, but he _is_ getting a bit restless. Might as well go to the canteen. 

Maybe Iris' occasional accusation that Barry's a bit of a pushover has a tiny little bit of merit...

Barry's already gone down the stairs and is halfway down the hall when he hears it.

Someone's talking about the Streak in one of the courtrooms! 

It must be a hearing related to one of the people Barry caught during one of his earlier exploits, he guesses. He can't resist slipping in through the door to listen, wondering what they're saying about him.

Maybe this will help Barry with his moral crisis regarding what to do about the Anti-Flash Task Force, which has only gotten worse.

Once Joe stopped being ridiculous and trying to forbid Iris from getting involved with the task force at all without explaining why (a futile attempt that only served to piss her off more), he announced that they needed to get Eddie to start feeding Team Flash information from the Force so they could start throwing them off the scent at once. Wells agreed, pointing out that this Force could represent a real threat to Barry's ability to protect the city as the Flash.

Barry expressed his concern - that this was the good intentioned path to corruption - but both Joe and Wells thought he was being unreasonable.

Barry doesn't trust Joe's opinion when he's on a West family warpath, though, and he's still conflicted. Some solid evidence of the good that he's doing would be a great way to reaffirm that he's doing the right thing...

"- in fact, your Honor, not a single policeman can testify to having seen my client committing any crime whatsoever," the lawyer standing before the bar is saying.

The judge is frowning at him. "Are you actually saying that the case against the defendant should be dismissed for lack of, what, eyewitness evidence?"

Yeah, that's totally not going to work - Barry doesn't need to be a lawyer to know that. Most cases these days get proven by circumstantial evidence, not direct eyewitness testimony.

"No, your Honor, not at all," the lawyer says politely. "This is a question of evidence, and whether the State has sufficient grounds to even bring these charges. This case isn't just circumstantial - it's a fabrication! My client and his associates were not arrested in the midst of committing a crime, as the prosecution suggests; on the contrary, every policeman here will testify that the first time they saw my client and his associates was when they appeared, sitting on the ground, in the front hall of the police station."

Oh, Barry remembers this one: they'd been trying to rob a jewelry store when he'd nabbed them.

"And what of the suggestion by the prosecution that your client was brought to the police station specifically to prevent him from committing the crime in question?" the judge asks.

"As I stated earlier, your Honor, the only facts that are accepted are that my client appeared in the police station as the victim of an assault by this so-called Streak," the lawyer says. 

What?!

"It was only because he appeared at the station that the police even began investigating my client's activity. There is more than mere reasonable doubt as to what they supposedly 'found' here," the lawyer continues. "This is nothing more than the police sweeping their own incompetence under the rug -"

_What?!_

"I don't think we need to go that far," the judge says. "On what grounds are you making your motion to dismiss?"

"An illicit search and a violation of the chain of custody for any relevant evidence," the lawyer replies promptly. "Any evidence obtained against my client was unlawfully obtained - the police only began their investigations once my client was in custody. It's all fruit of the poisoned tree."

No, seriously, _what the fuck?!_ Is this lawyer actually trying to get those robbers off the hook by saying that Barry's involvement, what, separated the criminals from the evidence of their crimes so that no one could be sure they were _actually_ committing the crime?!

"I see," the judge says. "An interesting point. What's the prosecution's response?"

Holy crap, is it _working?_

The prosecutor gets up. "Your Honor, my esteemed colleague has gotten the law of this state exactly backwards," she says. "While it is true that the investigation began after Mr. Daughtry appeared at the police station, that does not render the later-discovered evidence, including the videotapes from the jewelry store showing Mr. Daughtry breaking the lock on the door, videotapes that were obtained pursuant to a lawful warrant, into fruit of the poisoned tree. In fact, as this Court held in Martinez v. State ex rel Gonzalez -"

Barry ducks back out of the courtroom, his good mood well and truly ruined. 

He literally caught those guys mid-heist, and they're blaming him for stopping them? Would they have preferred that he wait for them to finish robbing the place first? What a stupid argument!

Ugh. 

_Lawyers._

Maybe he should look into getting a lawyer's advice as to what would be the best way to keep the chain of custody intact so as not to ruin the evidence for the prosecution of the people he stops...without revealing himself as the Flash. Somehow.

Being a superhero is a lot trickier than Barry originally thought. Justice doesn't end when you've defeated the bad guy, after all.

Ugh, this doesn't help Barry's crisis at _all_. He'll have to be more careful going forward, obviously, and think more about what he's doing, but that doesn't necessarily mean he should stop or anything. After all, those guys _were_ robbing that store, and the prosecution has video evidence to prove it. Barry's pretty confident the lawyer's argument, however clever, isn't going to fly.

But interfering with an active investigation the way Joe and Professor Wells are suggesting...?

If anyone found out they were doing that, wouldn't that just undermine any future arrests Barry contributes to as the Flash? But, on the other hand, if he gets caught, there won't be anyone to stop the metas, so surely keeping himself free should be the top priority – between saving people from real imminent danger vs. getting the bad guys put away for good, the former is vastly more important.

Clearly Barry needs to keep going. 

And yet - where does he draw the line between doing good as the Flash and doing bad things in support of that? Where does it stop being the right thing to do?

What if this is where it starts? A justified, justifiable little thing. And where it ends is - well.

Ralph Dibny.

Barry needs to figure this out. And _fast_.

And for that, unfortunately, he's going to need help – help straight from the source. 

"Where'd you go to get the coffee?" Lloyd complains when he sees Barry coming back. "South America?"

"Uh," Barry says. He'd totally forgotten to get the coffee. "They were - out."

"Typical," Lloyd sighs. "Anyway, one of the jurors got sick, and we got postponed. I told you it'd happen."

"You said it'd be the defense -"

"Whatever. I'm going back to the office; you want a lift?"

"Uh, no, I'm taking the rest of the day off -"

"Right, testifying perk for staff. Doing anything fun?"

"No," Barry says grimly. "Not really."

Barry hasn't exactly kept track of Dibny's whereabouts or anything, but a simple Google search is enough to find a - well, pretty awful and horrifically tacky website advertising the services of Ralph Dibny, Private Investigator, and on the website there's the address of a sketchy downtown office building. 

Barry can't believe he's doing this.

Before he can talk himself out of it, though, he zips over to the right address, goes upstairs and knocks at the door with Dibny’s name on it.

"Come in!"

Barry goes in.

It's a ratty little office with Dibny sitting in a chair turned away from the entranceway, facing the window instead of the door.

Weird.

"Welcome to my humble office," Dibny announces in a grandiose manner. "Don't let its appearance mislead you, for I - I am the solution to all of your hopes and dreams and -"

He starts to spin his chair around slowly.

"...oh. It's _you_." Dibny scowls, dropping the act and spinning the rest of the way around at normal speed. "Barry Allen. What the hell are you of all people doing here?"

Barry's shoulders go straight up to his ears. God, he hates Dibny so much. "What was with that - spin thing, anyway?" he asks instead, because that was weird.

"It's impressive! For the ladies." Dibny's scowl deepens. "I was hoping you were a hot chick."

"Get a lot of those here?" Barry snipes, unable to help himself.

"Don't get a lot of backstabbing cop wannabes, either," Dibny sneers. 

"Backstabbing?!"

"Oh, please tell me you've come crawling for _my_ help," Dibny continues. "Because man, turning you down would make my _month_ -"

"What the hell are you on, _backstabbing_?" Barry demands. He doesn't even care about the 'wannabe' part of it, cops always imagine that everyone not on the beat longs to be, but _backstabbing_? "What are you talking about? You broke the law! You! That's all on _you_!"

"You were the one who turned me in!"

"Yeah, I did, because you _broke the law_. You tried to frame someone!"

"Oh, so what?" Dibny snaps. "We all knew he was guilty -"

"That doesn't give you the right to _fake evidence_ -"

"I was pursuing justice for that poor murdered woman -"

"Oh, bullshit! You didn't care about her. You don’t even remember her name! You just wanted everyone fawning over you for getting the collar -"

"So? That's a reasonable thing to want. There's nothing to say that I can't have them both, is there?"

"Ugh, I can't believe I ever came here," Barry says, scowling. "I must have lost my _mind_."

He turns to go.

"No, wait!"

Barry pauses and glances back at Dibny, who eels out of his chair and around to the front his desk. 

"You came all this way," Dibny says. "You might as well sit down and talk a bit."

He gestures at the empty chair near Barry.

Barry's pretty sure Dibny just wants an excuse to rub this whole thing in Barry's face.

But he _does_ want those answers...

Reluctantly, he steps back away from the door and towards the chair.

"Great!" Dibny says, popping himself onto the desk. He uses the opportunity to shove a folder on his desk underneath his computer, like Barry would even care what sort of stupid cases he’s working on. "No harm in a bit of talking, am I right?"

"I can think of plenty of harm," Barry shoots back. "Mostly to my ears."

"Hey, remember, you're the one who came to _me_ ," Dibny points out. 

Sadly, he's got a point.

"And speaking of which, what _does_ bring an upstanding member of the CCPD down to my oh-so-humble abode? Got a job you need little old me for?"

"As if," Barry scoffs. Literally _never_ going to happen.

Dibny grits his teeth. “Okay, fine, not a job – you here about the mayor or something?”

“What? No. What does the mayor have to do with anything?”

“He doesn’t,” Dibny says, like that makes any sense. “So it’s information you want, then. You want me to mine my contacts for information -"

"You have contacts? _You_?" Barry asks. He knows he should stop being a dick, but Dibny makes it so very difficult. "What do you pay them with, birdseed?"

"Hey, I have plenty of contacts," Dibny protests. "And I'll have you know, some of them pay _me_. A lot, too! I've got all sorts of valuable intel from my time on the force, all the old office gossip, the secret stuff most people don't know - not that you'd know anything about that, you being an antisocial weirdo and all."

"I am _not_ an antisocial weirdo!" 

"Are too!"

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Are not - you know what, this is stupid."

Dibny coughs. "Maybe a bit, yeah. Seriously, though, what do you want? You didn't exactly leave me in a position where I can turn down work." He sounds bitter. "But it damn well better be paying work, Allen, or are you wasting my time?"

"I just want to ask you a few questions," Barry protests.

"I charge by the hour."

"Ugh, fine, whatever. Answer my questions and I'll pay for, like, the fifteen minutes of your time it's going to take."

"For you, Allen? You pay two hours, whether or not we use them."

"No way. Half-hour, max."

"Hour and a half."

"One hour."

"Fine."

"Deal. And you'd better not try to inflate your prices," Barry warns. "I know what you charge; it's on your website."

"Fine, whatever. Cash first."

Barry pulls out some money and tosses it on the desk.

It disappears. 

"Okay, fine," Dibny says. "What do you want to know?"

Barry hesitates.

"Listen, ask or don't ask," Dibny says. "I don't care, I've gotten paid either way."

He's _such_ a jackass.

"Why'd you do it?" Barry asks. Then, as Dibny frowns in confuses, adds, "The thing with the knife. Planting evidence."

Dibny looks surprised. "What, _that_? You already know, don't you? You said it yourself earlier on - I was trying to solve the case."

"I know that much," Barry says impatiently. "But - you couldn't have just woken up one day and decided that was the way to do it, right? You know the rules as well as I do -"

"Maybe not _quite_ as well as you do," Dibny mutters. "Brownnoser."

"- and you knew what you were doing was wrong. So why'd you do it?"

"Because there was no other way to get the guy," Dibny says, like it's obvious. "We exhausted everything else."

"It was still _wrong_ ," Barry says. "You broke the law."

"It was getting a criminal off the streets -" Dibny says. 

"By becoming one yourself!"

"Oh, _grow up_ , Allen. It's not like fudging a bit of evidence is the same as murdering someone. Besides, I'm a cop - I _was_ a cop. Are you really saying that a cop and an asshole that probably murdered his wife are the same?"

"I'm saying that it's a small step down the same road," Barry says. "If you're cutting corners to get someone off the streets, who's to say you might not decide to shoot someone instead of going to the trouble of arresting them?"

Dibny shrugs, callous as ever. "Maybe for some people that’s how it goes, but not me. I was a cop! A good cop! And I _knew_ this guy was guilty!"

"Just because you believe something doesn't make you _right_! What if you were wrong, huh? What if he was innocent, and you planting the evidence sent him to prison for a crime he didn't commit? You're not infallible, and you don't get to ignore the laws just because you're a cop. If anything, you're supposed to hold yourself to a higher standard - and you didn't."

"Damnit, Allen, you make it sound like I was actively committing felonies while on the payroll or something. It's not like I was a cop on the Family payroll or anything; we all know who those assholes are and they're freaking untouchable."

Ugh, Dibny sounds almost _wistful_.

"The department likes to know who the Family leaks are," Barry says, rolling his eyes. He doesn't like it, no one does, but there's no real way to avoid it. "It's not the same thing; no one ever lets them onto anything _actually_ secretive. Besides, it's not like you weren't friends with some of those guys!"

"They were coworkers! It made sense to be friendly with everyone in the department - still does, since it’s the cops I was friendly with who are the only ones with enough compassion to toss me cases when they're available. They know what it's like to need help when money runs tight."

Of course. Barry should've known; it all comes down to money for Dibny.

Or at least, it does now. It hadn't back then.

"It wasn't about money, though, the knife," Barry says, getting back to his point. "You made a decision."

"I made a mistake," Dibny says. "And you took every inch of it out of my ass. Why are you so obsessed about this, anyway?" He grins, wide and malicious. "Thinking about doing some planting yourself?"

"No!" Barry exclaims.

"Oooh, that was quick on the draw - is that _guilt_ I hear? Is pure, perfect Barry Allen - no, you wouldn't. Not you. But maybe someone else - someone you're thinking of covering for...?"

Dibny's eyes glitter like beetles.

"You're disgusting," Barry tells him, scowling. "I have no idea why I thought you might have _ever_ had a sense of morality or that you struggled with the decision or anything -"

"Hey, that's not fair," Dibny protests. "I struggled. I thought about it. But there wasn't any other way, that's all."

"But planting evidence isn't an _acceptable_ way," Barry says, frustrated. "It was better to let him go than to get him the wrong way – they did an informal double check of all your cases, you know, because of that, and the only reason they didn’t officially reopen the whole lot of them was because you quit."

"Because of you."

"Because of _you_ \- what _you did_..." Barry trails off, realizing. "You really just don't get it, do you? You got so good at convincing yourself that it was the right thing to do that you can't bring yourself to admit that you were wrong."

Dibny crosses his arms, glaring. "Oh, whatever, Allen. No one asked for your little pop psychology. Anyway, you haven't told why you want to know."

"Trying to get insight into a case," Barry lies. "That's all."

"A corruption case?" Dibny asks, suddenly looking somewhat concerned. His fingers start playing with the edge of the file he shoved under his desk. "What type? Like - another cop, like me? Or we talking more like blackmailing, bribery, that sort of thing? With whom? Some public official in particular?"

Barry rolls his eyes. Dibny’s probably worried that one of his private investigator cases might get preempted by a _real_ investigation. "You know I can't discuss active cases -"

"With anyone outside the precinct, I know, I know. I used to be a cop, I know the deal. But that's why you can trust me - I'm not about to squeal!"

"Yeah, right," Barry says. "You literally just told me that you exchange information as a business."

"Not about _active_ cases," Dibny says. "Only old stuff, you know, old cases that never got solved or cops that used to be on payroll or stupid shit like that."

"Dibny, even if I was the sort of person who’d tell you stuff about an active case, you also hate me personally and would take any opportunity to throw me under the bus," Barry points out.

"...yeah, fair point." Dibny shrugs. “Is that it, then?”

Barry snorts. "Yeah, that’s it," he says. "Anyway, thanks."

Dibny shrugs a second time, looking somewhat bemused. "Any time, I guess."

Barry goes to the door and opens it.

Then he immediately closes it again.

"What?" Dibny asks.

"Shhhh!" Barry hisses. "There are two Family thugs in your corridor!"

They're immediately recognizable - the dark suits, the swagger, the prison tattoos on their wrists and the Family mark on their necks.

God, Barry hates the Families.

"This isn't exactly a great part of town," Dibny sniffs. "I'm not exactly able to be picky about my neighbors." Still, he hesitates. "Uh, what Family?"

"What? Isn’t there a set territory –”

“I don’t know whose territory this is, Allen! What do they _look_ like?”

“Santinis, I think. Blood sworn."

"Shit," Dibny says. "Probably here for protection stuff, then - oh, not _me_ , Allen, don't look so horrified; I'm much too small fry for them to bother with me."

"Then who? We should -"

"Do nothing," Dibny says firmly. "No one will thank you for it and you know it."

Damnit, but Barry does know it.

As the Flash, sure, he could do something, but - what? It might technically be a crime to belong to a racketeering organization like the Families, but only if you can _prove_ that they've done something. There's no point in dropping these thugs off in the CCPD HQ; they'd be back on the street within the hour, and the Flash would have to tackle mob problems for the rest of his life.

Not ideal. 

Barry's _definitely_ not prepared to fight the Families.

"I'll report it to Organized Crime," he decides. 

"Like that'll do anything," Dibny snorts. "Oh, hey, say hi to Garry and Willy for me if you do, though."

Barry rolls his eyes. "Sightings are still important to report," he says. "You never know when it might be helpful. And you say hi to them yourself if you want; I'm not going to."

"You're no use to anyone at all, are you, Allen?" Dibny says, rolling his eyes back in an exaggerated fashion. "All high and mighty and self-righteous, and not a shred of sympathy for those you leave in the dust."

"Oh, I've got plenty of sympathy," Barry says, glancing around the dirty little office. Dibny had been a pretty good cop; he deserves better than this. But his own choices have brought him here. Besides, it isn't as though he was convicted or anything, merely fired and informally blackballed; there's nothing stopping him from getting a security job or even switching to another career entirely instead of spending over two years building up a stupid private investigator practice. "But not enough for you to manipulate me with, which I think is your real complaint."

He glances out the door. The Family guys are gone.

"Right," Barry says. "That's all I have. Thanks for the answers."

"Thanks for the easy cash," Dibny replies. "I'd say it was nice to see you again, but, well, it really wasn't."

"Ditto," Barry says, and leaves.

He manages to wait until he's in a secluded alleyway outside before he puts on his speed, even though he's itching to get out of this place.

Still, even at high speed, Barry has a moment or two to reflect. 

Talking with Dibny felt utterly pointless, but maybe it wasn't, not really. He'd gone there to find out how Dibny ended up doing what he did, and, well, he's gotten his answer: Dibny convinced himself it was the right and only thing to do, that there was no other way, that it _had_ to be done.

He just couldn't conceive of allowing what he considered to be a miscarriage of justice, and that had been enough to cause him to commit one himself.

He saw himself as above the law.

He wasn't.

And neither is Barry.

Oh, he isn't going to stop being the Flash - the city needs him. Unlike Dibny, he’s actually in a unique situation, with unique powers that make his illicit actions necessary to save people’s lives. He's going to keeping doing what he can to help people and, in the meantime, do what he can to make sure he doesn't get stopped.

But he's not going to let Joe or Eddie compromise their integrity, and the integrity of their work, in the process.

"Hey, Barry!" Cisco exclaims happily when Barry arrives. "Good to see you, man; we missed you yesterday."

"How did court go?" Caitlin asks.

"It didn't," Barry tells her with a shrug. "We got a postponement. But I still get the second half of the day off!"

"I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Allen," Wells says from behind Barry, causing him to jump a little. "Does that mean you'll be working with us on your speed for the rest of the afternoon?"

"That's right," Barry says, already mentally girding himself. "I need to get faster. A lot faster. There's no other way to defeat the Man in Yellow. That's the top priority right now."

"That's right," Wells says. "After all, we must make sure to prioritize what's _really_ important. Isn't that right, Mr. Allen?"

"Absolutely," Barry says, thinking of his decision to stay on the right side of the law as much as possible and feeling good about it. He made the right choice; he's sure of it. "That's totally right."

"I'm glad we agree," Wells says, and smiles.


	9. 9

"You're doing it again," Danvers says gleefully.

Len puts his phone down. "No idea what you're talking about," he lies.

"You know _exactly_ what I'm talking about."

"Nope."

"You're smiling. You _never_ smile."

"I smile."

"You really don't, boss," Danvers chides. "You should. It's a good look on you."

Len arches his eyebrows at her.

"It is!" she insists. "I mean, sure, okay, you've managed to convince at least six people here that you're about to purge the department, but that's just because you look kinda smug and demonic when you smile -"

Len grins, with teeth.

"Stop that, it's not a _good_ thing."

Len's not so sure about that. 

His phone buzzes.

Len can feel his vicious grin melting into a softer, fonder smile.

"Go on," Danvers says, her own smile turning positively wicked. Len's proud: that's entirely his influence. "Don't leave your boyfriend hanging."

"We went on _one date_ , Danvers."

"Oh, it was a _date_ , now; I thought it was just an information-gathering dinner..."

"It can be both," Len says with great dignity. "Please ignore all previous statements to the contrary."

"Boss..."

"I know, I know," Len says, holding his hands up in concession. "Don't worry, I'm not crossing any lines with it. It'll stay platonic - at least until I clear him, anyway. _Then_ we can be boyfriends."

“Woo hoo!” Danvers cheers. “One _very_ cute guy, in the bag –”

“And how would you know that?”

“I went to sneak a peek at him, obviously,” Danvers says, absolutely shameless. “Have to know what’s good enough to catch my boss’ eyes, don’t I?”

"Oh, shut up," Len tells her, but his attention is back on his phone, reading Allen's latest ridiculous story about his (highly implausible) workday. The most recent twist involves several long paragraphs regarding his newly discovered dreams of retiring to a goat farm.

Allen texts remarkably fast. 

Must be a millennial thing.

It's nice, though; Len's used to being the talker, the chatty one, but Allen (should he call him Barry?) has a motor mouth that puts Len's to shame.

(Mick would find it hilarious and say it’s exactly what Len deserves.)

At least Len's still winning their pun-off hands down.

Not literally hands down, of course, since it's happening largely through text.

Heh, he'll have to mention that one to Allen...

"When are you going to see him again?" Danvers asks, interrupting Len's pun-related reverie. "For a date, I mean; not for an investigation."

"I'm still investigating him," Len reminds her. And himself. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, you’re still investigating, of _course_ you are," Danvers replies, flapping her hands at him. "You're way too paranoid - what you told me about Allen investigating the Flash makes perfect sense to me. Especially since we've managed to correlate a lot of Allen's mysterious disappearances and out-of-field conversations with all the stuff the Flash is up to. We just need to prove it and bam! Dating free and clear."

"Bam? Really?"

"I watch a lot of Food Network," Danvers says. "Shut up. Seriously, though, you're not going to wait until the investigation is done to go out with him again, are you? Tell me you're not!"

"I'm seeing him again tonight," Len admits.

Danvers literally punches the air.

"You're overly invested in this," Len tells her. "Seriously over-invested."

She rolls her eyes at him. "You tell me all about it! All the time!"

"You're my secretary! I need you to make sure that I don't double book over any MR days or anything."

"A, it’s admin assistant, not secretary. B, you went to see Mick _yesterday_ ," Danvers says. "Because Allen was working late to make up for taking the day off after being at court in the morning the day before. You know perfectly well that you're not missing anything; you just want to gloat."

Well.

She's not entirely wrong.

Though Len still feels obscurely guilty about how much time he's spending on Allen instead of his usual work, even though the DAs have suggested that they’re appreciating the break. 

Or maybe the guilt comes from the fact that he still hasn't figured out exactly how, or why, Allen faked the coma business, and how that ties in with whatever STAR Labs is up to with the Flash - a question that will only be answered either by Allen himself, or with the arrest of the Flash.

Both, ideally.

(No, Len does _not_ have daydreams of presenting the Flash handcuffed to Allen on a silver platter. Really. At all. That would be unprofessional and unproductive, and anyway he probably won't be the one making the arrest if everything goes well; that honor would be going to Detective Thawne, him being an actual detective and all.)

He really hopes Allen is clean – well, clean of everything but a bit of insurance fraud, but insurance fraud in the pursuit of his mother’s murderer; surely that’s somewhat more understandable, right?

Mick would understand that.

Len thinks Mick would like Allen.

He confessed the whole thing to Mick during his visit the day before: how wonderfully their dinner (date) had gone, how they'd connected and talked and _kept_ talking, how Len's infatuation was moving from a mostly physical attraction and a slight appreciation for Allen's niceness towards something far more dangerous...how he was worried that he would let his feelings interfere with his investigation.

How he knows they already have.

They have been from the start, when he began investigating Allen as much because of Mick as anything else, and they are now, with his fondness for Allen leading him to want to find a result that will exonerate him.

Yes, the Flash theory makes sense, but it isn’t the only possibility. After all, Allen could still be an accomplice.

He could still be corrupt.

God, Len wishes he knew what STAR Labs was up to. 

He just can’t figure out what the Flash's _deal_ is. 

The guy claimed that he isn't seeking glory, and despite himself Len thinks he believes him, so it’s not about that. Nor does the Flash seem motivated by revenge, the way the Hood/Arrow's vendetta against crime had obviously been at the start. And it certainly isn't some idiot joyriding around on some new technology, either. 

Len would be willing to give the Flash the benefit of the doubt and say that the whole thing really is stemming from an overdeveloped sense of public duty, but every time he considers it, he thinks about Allen, and more than Allen, he thinks about all those damn disappearances.

Far too many people seem to disappear without a trace after an encounter with the Flash, or at the very least streaks of lightning that suggest his presence. 

The latest disappearance: LaShawna Baez, an ex-medical student that'd gotten tangled up with a bad boyfriend with Family ties. 

Of course, they all suspected the boyfriend was responsible when he'd gotten caught, but when questioned, he swore that he'd left her behind to be captured by the cops or the Flash when their little Bonny-and-Clyde streak of robberies went off the rails.

Heh.

_Streak_ of robberies...

Either way, another disappearance like that, right around yet another Flash sighting? Not good. After all, at most, Baez would have been guilty of grand robbery without any aggravating factors, like use of arms or felony manslaughter, and that sort of crime doesn't come with a death sentence. If the Flash killed her, then there can be no doubt that he is perverting the legal system in the worst of ways.

And if he _isn't_ killing them, then where are they?

A mystery.

Unlike many people, Len didn't become a cop because he likes solving mysteries. He became a cop because he wants to see justice done. Mysteries are nothing but an impediment to that goal.

Len's phone buzzes again.

Not Allen, though; it's a text from...Danvers?

It reads: "Where are you taking him?" 

"Very funny," Len tells her, looking up and rolling his eyes at her.

"Hey, since it seems like you're only accepting messages by phone today, I figured I'd follow protocol," Danvers says, laughing and putting down her own phone. "But seriously, where are you going? Not somewhere outside, I hope; the forecast is for intermittent bursts of rain."

"No, not outside. He's picked a restaurant downtown," Len says. "Hole-in-the-wall in an iffy area, but supposedly the best pasta you can find in the city."

"Better than Antonio's?"

"Doubtful -" No one's pasta is better than what the seemingly immortal Antonio served up in his eponymous restaurant, and Len's not just saying that because he more or less survived his pre-teen years on Antonio's willingness to trade extra bowls of pasta for help washing up the tables that Len suspects he didn't really need. "- but it's always worth a try."

"Have fun," Danvers says. "Though - if it's an iffy part of the city -"

"I'm not wearing the mask on a _date_ , Danvers," Len says sternly. "No. Just - no."

"Fine," she says, pouting. "But you take two phones and an emergency alert, got it?"

"Danvers -"

" _No_ , boss. This is non-negotiable. You're still basically number one on the Family hit list. Just because they've left off a bit now that you're doing internal affairs in the middle of a police station most of the time doesn't mean that they'll hesitate to shoot you if they see you on their turf."

"I'll be careful," Len promises. 

Danvers doesn't look entirely appeased, but it's the best she's going to get, so she takes it. 

Len kills the next few hours with a combination of texting with Allen and finishing up the paperwork to get warrants on the next batch of cops under suspicion. 

He's a little worried that all that texting means that they won't have anything to talk about during dinner, but that fear turns out to be totally misplaced: the conversation flows as easily as the endless refills of soda that Allen keeps draining in his infectious excitement. 

(The pasta's no Antonio's, but the breadsticks are definitely out of this world. He'll have to tell Danvers.)

Len's not even sure what they talked about: everything and anything, from the deplorable state of politics in Central to the perils of paperwork, the need to improve infrastructure in the slums without it resulting in gentrification and the eviction of the current residents, to the trials and tribulations inherent in finding just the right present for their respective siblings/best friends. 

They're both laughing over some dumb joke Len made - some unnecessarily complicated and definitely not-actually-that-funny thing about the Central City Combines and the Transformers cartoon/toy series - when they leave to go home, with Allen laughing so hard that he needs to lean a hand against Len's shoulder to steady himself and Len wiping tears of amusement out of his eyes.

That's probably why he doesn't see the guy sliding out of the darkness to cut off the exit to the alleyway that's the only way in or out of the restaurant. 

He definitely hears it when the guy snarls, "Put your hands up and no one'll get hurt," though.

They both stop laughing at once and turn to look at the mugger.

He's of average height and build, dressed in baggy clothing of assorted colors that have faded through over-use. He seems moderately well-put together, though, despite the stringy brown hair that seems to be trying to form white-man's-dreadlocks - which is to say, knots. 

He's holding a switchblade on them.

It's not even a _gun_.

"Seriously?" Allen says. " _Seriously_? You just – to – right in the middle of – jeez, some people just have no luck."

Len couldn't agree more. What sort of unfortunate luck must a mugger have to pick not one but _two_ CCPD employees, a cop and a CSI, to try to rob?

Of course, Allen doesn't know what Len does, and Len doesn't want it to come out this way - then he'd have to confess to the yet-unfinished investigation, because there's no way that he works at the same precinct and doesn't know about Allen.

If anything, that restriction cripples him more than his current need to use a crutch.

"I mean it!" the mugger insists. "Now!"

"If you need money, there's a cardboard brigade outpost not far from here," Len tells him. "I can point it out to you if you're not familiar. But robbery's only going to get you thrown in jail."

"Seriously," Allen says again, this time in emphatic agreement. He's shifting from foot to foot, looking as though he's torn between options of what to do - Len can't blame him; a middle-class kid like Allen's probably only been mugged once or twice in his life. He's probably debating whether fight, flight, or concession makes the most sense.

Not unlike Len, who, despite many years of experience on the wrong side of muggings, needs to decide if it's worth discarding his disguise and revealing his secret to get them both out of this.

The mugger's eyes fix on Len and abruptly narrow. "Hey," he says. "Don't I..."

And then he grins.

Len doesn't like that grin, nasty and cruel and planning nothing good for anyone. 

"Oh hell no," Allen yelps as the mugger, without any other warning, suddenly lunges forward, knife extended, straight at the two of them.

A second later, the knife clatters to the ground - Allen must have swatted it out of the mugger's hand at remarkable speed - followed very quickly by the mugger himself, because Len balanced on his good foot and used the crutch in his other hand to bash the mugger right over the head, knocking him out.

They both look at each other.

And burst out laughing.

"My hero," Allen chokes out. 

"You're the one who went for the knife," Len reminds him, sniggering. "Right back at you."

"Oh, sure, I went for the knife, yeah, but you broke out the crutch-foo -"

"Hey, a man's gotta know to defend himself! It's a hard world out there!"

"What the hell's going on here?" a voice bellows from behind them.

They turn, still laughing; it's the maître d' from the restaurant.

"Sorry," Allen manages to get out between hoots of laughter. "This guy tried to mug us -"

The maître d' glances down at the unconscious mugger. "Oh, great, _him_ again," he says with annoyance. "All right, get out of here, both of you; I'll call it in to the cops."

He probably won't, if he knows the mugger personally, or at least he'll give the mugger a chance to wake up and flee the scene first, but whatever; Len's on a date he doesn't want to disrupt, and he never much liked arresting poor people even when they clearly deserved it.

He glances at Allen, who nods and thanks the maître d', and with that they both leave the alleyway behind. 

"Well, that was a terrible ending to a pretty good dinner,” Allen remarks.

"It wasn't that bad," Len says. A bit of unexpected excitement goes a long way to making even the dullest dinner interesting, in his view, and this was far from the dullest of dinners.

"I don't know," Allen says ruefully. "I take you to a restaurant I like in a sketchy part of town and then, for the first time ever in my experience coming to this place, someone tries to mug and then kill us? I don't see how it could possibly be worse."

The second he says that, there's a roll of thunder.

No. It can't be. The world does not love anyone enough to give them such perfect timing.

It _is_.

The skies open up above them, rain sheeting down in one of Central City's infamously abrupt downpours.

Len's heart is going to explode out of sheer what-wonderful-timing glee.

"You had to say it," he tells Allen, beaming.

"I had to say it," Allen agrees, starting to laugh again.

Allen - Barry - looks so happy, standing there with the rain sheeting down on him, soaking his clothing and plastering his hair to his skull in what really ought to be an unattractive wet-dog look but really isn't, that Len finds himself taking that extra step forward and pressing their lips together.

A second later, he abruptly remembers himself - and his investigation! - and pulls away. "I'm sorry," he says. "I should have asked - we said this was just about getting to know each other -"

Allen reaches out and pulls Len back into the kiss by his jacket lapels. 

Oh, Len really shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't.

But he's _happy_ , damnit, and it's been so long since he's been happy, really truly unabashedly happy - not just with a possible romantic partner, that's been forever and a half, but with anyone at all, months and months -

God, Len is so screwed.

He leans into the kiss, reaching up to grab Allen by the shoulders to pull him in -

His side gives a sharp, sudden stab of agony as his crutch falls to the ground.

"Oh, man, I'm so sorry!" Allen exclaims, breaking away, taking care to steady Len on his feet before squatting down to pick up the crutch again. "Man, I should've been thinking -"

"If you were thinking, we were both doing something wrong," Len says dryly, trying to recover himself while also clutching at his side a bit. He's familiar with pain, has a great pain tolerance, but even he gets tripped up by it sometimes. 

Allen smiles at him as he hands over the crutch. "Yeah," he says. "I - don't think we were. I mean. If you don't."

Len's still hurting - joy and love making pain go away is the stuff of fairytales and romance novels - but he does end up smiling helplessly back. "No," he says. "Though maybe -"

"We go slow?" Allen suggests. 

Len nods.

"That works for me," Allen says. "Like, really. I've got some stuff I need to work through - stuff I _want_ to work through. I - I like you. A lot. And I'd like this to work out. But for that to happen, I need to get over some stuff. So, uh, yeah. If slow works for you, slow works for me."

"Slow works," Len agrees, smiling. "I've got some stuff on my plate, too -" That stupid investigation, for one. God, he wishes he could just get over himself and decide that Allen is innocent, but that's just not his way. Not until he's proved what happened. "- so, yeah. Slow works great."

Allen laughs. "This is kind of ironic in ways you don't even know about yet, but you will," he says, a promise dancing in his eyes. "And, uh, yeah. Good. I'm glad we're on the same page. Want me to catch you a cab?"

Len manages, through valiant effort, to keep them to a single kiss good-night before he gets into the cab and goes home in an utterly fantastic mood.

He'd say that it's the sort of mood that can't be brought down, but that would be a lie, because limping into his supposedly secure apartment and finding Charlie standing there browsing the cookbook section of his bookcase does the trick pretty well.

"What the hell do you want," Len says flatly. 

"That's not nice," Charlie says peaceably, continuing to browse. "You should be nicer."

Len rolls his eyes. Charlie is an old - is friend the right word when you can't stand someone but put up with them anyway out of long-standing habit? Probably not. 

An old contact? That works. 

Len has known Charlie since they were both in juvie together. He was mildly unsettling back then; he's positively creepy now. 

It's the way you're distinctly aware of those priors for cannibalism (technically, disgracing a corpse) and possible kidnapping the entire time you're around him, even if you don't actually _know_ about them.

Still, while, despite that fact, Len generally considers Charlie to be harmless - he's usually willing to accept a firm 'no', bizarrely enough - that doesn't mean he wants Charlie appearing in his apartment.

Len _sleeps_ here.

"Who let you in?" Len asks.

"Your house-cleaner," Charlie says promptly. "She remembered me from last time."

Len's going to have to have a word with her.

"And why are you here?" Len prompts, since Charlie seems to be getting distracted with a book on large-scale barbecuing that Len'd gotten for Mick as a present one year. 

"I was wondering if anyone had tried to kill you yet," Charlie replies. 

Len stares at him.

Charlie blinks back. "Hasn't anyone told you about the new bounty on your head?"

"No, Charlie," Len says, keep his voice mild and controlled. "You're one of my contacts, remember? _You're_ supposed to tell me about these things - I don't know them if you don't tell me them."

"Oh. Right. Well, they only put it up a day or two ago. Hasn't anyone tried to kill you yet?"

"No, I don't keep a regular schedule, which makes it harder to -" Len pauses.

That's his usual answer, but it's not true, is it? Someone _did_ try to kill him.

Sure, a random probably-high mugger acting on impulse, not a Family assassin, but now that Len considers it, the guy _had_ stared at Len, recognizing him, before escalating from a mugging to attempted murder. 

If there's a bounty on his head, with a picture attached, that would explain the recognition.

"A Family bounty?" Len asks.

"Of course," Charlie says. "They really do hate you, you know."

"I do know," Len says. That doesn't mean he's not puzzled, though. "Still, recognizing my face...I thought they'd put the bounty on the backburner for a while? On account of them not wanting to start an outright war with law enforcement?"

Charlie shrugs. "It's back on. Or, well, it was never _off_ , but notice of it was redistributed. I heard a rumor that you crossed one of their assassins and they made a request."

Assassins? Len hasn't been allowed anywhere near anything Family related, much less one of their trained killers.

Maybe one of the corrupt cops he'd taken down?

But the only one in the last week or two was Cichowski. That seems highly unlikely.

Besides -

"Why wouldn't an assassin just take me down themselves?" Len asks, a little skeptical. "Seems the most straightforward approach."

Charlie shrugs again. "Laziness, vanity, doesn't want his name associated with it - who knows? Could be plenty of reasons." 

Point well taken.

“How good a rumor is it, that it's one of the Family assassins' behind it?” Len asks. "Rather than one or another of the Family's brass getting a bee in their bonnet for some reason or another?"

“Just a rumor.”

That’s not worth much.

“Let me know if there’s anything more in that?” Len asks.

“Of course,” Charlie says. “I’ll ask around. But you should be careful.”

Len's lips twitch. "No one gets to kill and eat me but you?"

"If I kill you, I'm going to eat you, yes," Charlie says, as mildly and peaceably as ever. "Same thing if I find your body in a well-preserved state. But you're my friend: there's no reason for me to want you to go before your time."

That's almost heartwarming, if you ignore the kill-and-eat part. And possibly the "before your time" part; Len's going to have to check that Charlie hasn't hatched another plan to kidnap, murder, and devour him again, especially now that he doesn’t have Mick to keep an eye out about it for him.

It's a good thing Charlie's plans are invariably crap.

"Well?" Charlie says expectantly.

"I'll be careful," Len promises. "Now get the hell out of my apartment."

Charlie does, taking with him one of the cookbooks - not the barbeque one, which he knows is off limits, but one of the how-to-make-macrons ones, which, uh, _what_? 

"That's not nearly as funny as you think it is, boss," Danvers informs him the next morning, when he tells her the story. "Can we get back to the part where your life is in danger?"

"It's just a bounty," Len objects. "There's technically been one on my head this entire time."

"Yes, but you haven't had _random muggers_ escalating to _attempted murder_ the second they _recognize your face_!"

Oh, boy. Danvers is breaking out the increased emphasis. 

"It wasn't a serious attempt -"

"Boss!"

"I'll keep wearing the mask when I go out on Flash business, okay?" Len says. "I promise."

Danvers crosses her arms and glares. 

Len swears he can feel the hair on his arms start scorching.

Time to use his trump card.

"I also promise that I'll stick to Jitters and other well-lit areas for any more dates with Allen," he offers.

Danvers keeps glaring for an extra second to make sure he knows that she's only going to fall for his bait because she wants to, not because he tricked her, and then she grins. "You're going to have more dates?"

"We are," Len confirms, unable to keep himself from smiling back. "Going slow, though - he's getting over somebody, and I need to finish the Flash investigation first."

"If you get the Flash, then Allen can stop doing all the suspicious things he's doing," Danvers agrees. "And you can scratch the whole thing off as well-meant but misguided over-enthusiasm."

"Well, not the whole thing," Len demurs. "I'm still going to make him deal with the insurance fraud aspect of it all. But yes, if he's not corrupt, that makes things much easier. But remember -"

"Yes, yes, I know, people on your list are guilty until proven innocent."

"No," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Just Occam's razor: corruption is unfortunately still the more reasonable explanation. Do you really want me getting in deep with someone with an asterisk by his name?"

Danvers softens. "Yeah, okay," she says. "You sure it isn't too late for that?"

"I'm infatuated, not in love," Len says. "If we find out that he's no good, I'll live."

He'll be disappointed, sure, even maybe a little heartbroken, but whatever.

"What's on the agenda today?" he asks, changing the subject. His resolution to practice talking about his feelings with Danvers so that he doesn't choke up when apologizing to Mick after he wakes up (if he wakes up) aside, he still doesn't enjoy it. Give him work to do instead any day.

That pesky work ethic is probably why he was Central City's most successful freelance thief for over a dozen years running, possibly more, depending on how you count these things.

"Let me check," Danvers says, sliding back over to her computer. "Looks like a pretty light day - you've got some meetings in the afternoon with the DAs to walk them through some of your evidence again so that they don't get cold feet about bagging a cop, _again_ -"

"In an election year, with only a short while to go before the primary? They ought to be happy that I'm giving them so much law-and-order cleaning-up-the-system cred."

"I'm not the one you need to convince of that," Danvers says dryly. "Anyway, that left this morning pretty open, so I took the liberty of arranging an informal powwow on behalf of the Anti-Flash Task Group -"

"It's not actually called that, you know."

Danvers rolls her eyes at him.

"That sounds great," Len adds. Some solid investigative work sounds right up his alley right now. "They're coming here?"

"Detective Thawne and Miss West, yes," Danvers confirms. "I figured you didn't want _every_ street cop who's potentially on the task force personnel list."

"Definitely not." Len pushes himself back from his chair and up to a standing (well, leaning) position. "I'm going to practice some PT in my office; let me know when they get here."

The joys of healing.

Thawne and Iris - she'd insisted, by virtue of refusing to answer to anything else, and anyway he needs to distinguish her from the other, less amiable West that stalks the precinct with a grim scowl like he thinks that alone would drive Len away - arrive an hour later, when Len's finished and already put his leg up to rest while he grimly drains a green smoothie designed to feed him nutrients he needs.

He hates green smoothies.

All those _vegetables_ –

(They don’t taste like the ones Mick made him eat at all. He wonders if Allen likes veggies...)

"Hey, sorry, are we late?" Iris asks, looking around the mostly deserted conference room that doubles as Len's part of the precinct. "Or, uh, early?"

"Right on time," Danvers chirps. "Please, have a seat anywhere you like; as you can see, we've got the space but not the personnel. Captain Snart will be out of his office momentarily."

Len's mostly glad about the excuse to toss the smoothie.

Danvers glares at him when he comes out to the main room - she always knows when he's thrown away his smoothie, it's uncanny; he swears she can see through walls - but he ignores her and hobbles over to greet his guests.

Teammates?

Whatever.

"I look forward to working with you, Detective Thawne," Len says, sticking his hand out. "I've heard good things."

Thawne looks surprised.

"Eddie!" Iris hisses, elbowing him in the side.

He abruptly remembers himself and belated reaches out to shake Len's hand.

"Don't worry, I get it," Len says dryly. "The fire-breathing gorgon with snake for hair's a lot less intimidating in person, yeah?"

Thawne flushes a bit, but smiles ruefully. "I think ice breath is the more common story."

"Ice? How would that even work - am I breathing it out in solid form?" Len asks, amused. "Or is it more like sneezing snowflakes?"

"Probably more like an artic wind gust, using the Joule-Thompson effect," Danvers volunteers. "Compressed air through a small opening drops the temperature significantly; that, in combination with saliva acting as a freezing agent, would lower the temperature of the exhale to such a negative degree that anything that's hit by it gets iced over."

They look at her.

She blushes. "I mean," she says. "If he had freeze breath."

"No, I like that," Len says. "That would actually be really _cool_."

Danvers, far too used to him, groans.

"Was that a pun?" Iris says, starting to grin. "Captain Cold makes cold puns?"

"Captain Cold makes _all_ puns," Danvers says.

"This is a non-discriminatory office," Len agrees. 

Thawne snorts, and Len can see him finally starting to relax. "Glad to hear that," Thawne says. "Sorry about my reaction. I'm actually really looking forward to working on this task force; it's my first time leading an investigation without a senior partner."

"Isn't Captain Snart your senior partner?" Iris asks.

"No, I'm his boss," Len says. "That's different. Still, glad you’re thinking that way, Thawne; I'm hoping that you'll be able to take a lot of solo lead on this investigation." He nods at his crutch. "I'm ain't exactly my old mobile self these days."

"Not to mention on a Family hit list," Danvers pointedly mutters to no one in particular.

"A Family hit list?" Iris asks, sounding interested. "Really?"

"I used to do undercover work," Len tells her, a little charmed by how impressed she looks by it. Undercover work didn't allow for much bragging, for obvious reasons. Besides, even if he’d had someone to brag about it to, he'd been too angry to really get any joy out of it before now. "The Families don't appreciate that much."

"That's pretty awesome," Iris says. "What did you do when you were undercover, if I'm allowed to ask?"

"Oh, don't ask him that," Danvers says before Len can reply. "He'll be showing off his pickpocketing skills for days; it's unbearable."

She's grinning, though, and Iris grins back. "I don't know," she says. "That sounds like it could be interesting."

"Could be," Len says, and hands her back her wristwatch to an exclamation of delight. "But we should probably focus on the Flash."

Iris straps her watch back on, grinning even more now. "Yeah, probably. We're still agreed on not treating him like a criminal, right?"

"No, we're agreed that we're withholding judgment pending further investigation," Len corrects. "But yes, innocent until proven guilty's still a thing, if that's what you're asking. I won't hold anything wrong he's done against him until I prove he's done it."

"What's he done to make you think he's done something wrong at all?" Iris challenges.

"Other than being an unauthorized vigilante and however many counts of assault on purported 'criminals' - yes, purported, they're innocent till proven guilty, too - you mean? The disappearances."

Iris blinks. "Disappearances? What disappearances?"

"Serial disappearances," Danvers clarifies. "I've been logging strange events in Central City, and a number of them can be correlated with your map of Flash activity."

"That doesn't mean the Flash is behind them," Iris objects.

"He could be trying to solve them," Thawne suggests, though he looks more dubious than Iris. 

"Not exactly his job," Len reminds them. "But that's what we're here to figure out. If the Flash really is a do-gooder, and not involved in these disappearances, then we can see about getting him some legal backing - a badge, and the ethics course that accompanies wearing that badge."

"Ethics?" Iris asks dryly, arching her eyebrows in mock surprise. "In Central?"

"Yes," Thawne says, and unlike Iris he's utterly serious. "Just because lots of people don't have any doesn't mean we shouldn't be aiming to do better."

"You sound like a politico before their first reelection campaign," Len says. "But as it happens, I agree. I love this city, dirt and all, but just because it's always been dirty before ain't no reason to tolerate it. Corruption's the root of all the problems we've got, and it starts with people thinking ethics are optional because this is Central. It might be Central, but you gotta put your money where your mouth is when it comes to ethics or else what’s the point?"

Iris nods, while Thawne looks thoughtful. "You really mean what you say, don’t you?" he says. "It’s not a grudge or anything – you're really trying to clean up the city."

"One traitorous cop at a time," Len agrees, even though it’s not entirely correct: he’s one hundred percent fulfilling a grudge, but there’s no reason he can’t clean up the city at the same time. "Well, assuming the Families - or the cops - don't shoot me first."

“Oh, no,” Iris says. “You’re not allowed to get shot before I get to the bottom of these disappearances and prove you wrong about the Flash.”

Len smirks. 

Sounds good to him.


	10. 10

"Seriously, it feels like we don't spend any time together anymore," Iris says, settling down on the park bench with her to-go cup of Jitters coffee and pulling an unresisting Barry to sit down next to her. "And yes, I know, part of that's on me - there's Eddie, and writing, and, well, everything, but you're my best friend, Barry; I don't want you to get lost in the shuffle. Tell me what's up with you!"

At this point, suppressing the mixed feeling of longing, disappointment, and gratitude for being in Iris' life in any way is almost habitual, and Barry's surprised to find that it's easier than ever to wave it away.

Maybe it's because he actually has things to talk about with her, rather than his usual shrug and "Uh, Netflix has a new season of [insert Barry's current guilty pleasure reality show], so that's been great" response.

"Oh, you know," Barry says. "Work's got some interesting investigations going on, I'm still hanging out with Cisco and Caitlin and Dr. Wells most afternoons, date number three with Cool Coffee Guy went _fantastically_ -"

"You didn't tell me you were on date three!" Iris exclaims, checking him with her shoulder. In a friendly manner, but still: ouch. "You have to tell me _everything_!"

Okay, yes, maybe suppressing feelings of romantic disappointment is easier when you want to boast about landing the hottest guy ever. Who knew?

"There's nothing to tell!" Barry protests, grinning. "After the whole mugging incident on date two -" 

He'd detailed that one to her at length over the phone.

"- we decided that we'd just go to Jitters or something and take a walk in the park. We ended up sitting on one of the big rocks in the grassy areas and making up backstories for passersby."

"Barry Allen," Iris says, trying to sound stern and failing. "Are you living life like you're in a quirky romance novel?"

"We only ended up doing that because neither of us had good non-food thoughts for a date and I told him you said it was the epitome of a romantic date," Barry tells her. 

"I was _fourteen_ when I said that!"

"If it makes you feel better, we set the presupposition that we live in a horror movie and tried to figure out which one of them was a zombie plague carrier and, if so, who was patient zero," Barry says.

Iris rolls her eyes and smacks him on the shoulder again - thank God for superhealing because Iris' aim, even unintentionally, has never been anything but on point - but honestly, that was the best part of the date in Barry's opinion.

....second best part. The kiss goodbye was number one.

But putting that aside, they'd discovered a mutual love of monster movies, the more absurd the better, and Barry'd gotten to bust out some of his more obscure supernatural knowledge from all those years gathering data like a nerd. He _never_ gets a chance to impress someone with that!

He says as much to Iris, which makes her laugh.

"I'm glad you finally met someone you really like, Barry," Iris says warmly, taking a sip from her coffee. "You know Joe and I were worried you'd end up with someone who wore tin foil as a fashion statement."

"I resent and possibly resemble that remark -" He had indeed met his first girlfriend over a supernatural forum, a fact no West would ever let him live down, even though she'd been a Mothman spotter rather than a tin foil UFOist. And yes, that’s an important distinction. "- but what's this about 'finally'? I've dated people before."

"So did I," Iris says. "But not seriously, not really. Not until I met Eddie." She pauses, looking introspective. "No, it wasn't just meeting Eddie. It was - I was looking at things differently. Is - is it an awful thing to say that I don't think I _would've_ dated someone seriously if it weren't for your coma? Not that I'm _happy_ you were in a coma or anything -"

"No, no, I didn't think you were saying that," Barry assures her. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," she says. "It's just - losing you - you're such a big part of my life, Barry. You make me happy, you support me, you _know_ me - you're my best friend. When I thought I'd lost you forever, I started looking seriously at my life, at what I wanted."

"And what you wanted was - Eddie?" Barry asks, because - ouch. He might be trying to get over Iris, but still: _ouch_.

He thinks he prefers that she punch his shoulder.

"No, not exactly, though it did help that he turned out to be so much more than the pretty boy hotshot I thought he was at first," Iris says with a laugh. "I just realized that I wanted to be serious. And for me to be serious with someone, they had to be okay with you. A lot of guys aren't, and I'm sure it wasn't exactly easy for Eddie when you went from being abstract to being real, but he's been really great about it. I wouldn't date anyone if they didn't like you, or you like them."

Barry nods. He's - not entirely sure where Iris is going with this.

"You _do_ like him, right?" she asks.

Oh!

"Oh, man, yes! Yes, of course; I think he's great," Barry assures her. "I really do. He's nice and earnest and he taught me _boxing_ the other day to help me destress - he's really great, Iris. I'm glad you found someone like him."

She looks at him consideringly, with what Barry's always thought of as her truth-extracting gaze even before she got into investigative journalism. Luckily Barry _is_ telling the truth, so she nods, appeased. 

"And what about your Len?" she asks. "I know I haven't had a chance to meet him -"

"If you think I'm introducing you before the fifth date - maybe the tenth - you've lost your mind," Barry says firmly. "You'll scare him off."

Iris snorts. "You'd never date someone that I could scare off, Bar, be serious."

"I came out here to have a nice chat," Barry complains. "And now I'm being called out and attacked just for having a type -"

"Only because most people don't have 'terrifyingly badass' as a type," Iris teases. "But seriously; you mentioned that you talked about me to him - is he okay with it? Us being close, I mean?"

Ooooooooh.

Now Barry gets where this is going. 

This is the "remember that time when you confessed you were in love with me and it was super awkward because I'm in love with another guy and we both silently agreed to never discuss it again but now you're dating someone and because I'm your friend I want to make sure that you're not in a rebound or anything that might ultimately turn toxic and hurt you" conversation, with a side order of "you know how we're ridiculously close friends with each other which some people don't really get because they don't do friends that way but we're really not willing to give that up for anyone, my guy's cool with it, how about yours?"

Without ever actually _having_ that conversation, of course. He's pretty sure that actually saying any of those words would give both of them hives from the overwhelming embarrassment of it all.

"He gets it," Barry assures her. "He's got a best friend, too, a good one, close, like we are, so he really gets it. He understands that you can care about someone a lot without it being a problem for a romantic relationship with someone else."

Iris studies him for a long moment, then nods again. "Good. I'm glad. What's this Len guy's friend's name? Has he mentioned anything about him?"

AKA, he didn't just make him up to sound good, right?

Oh, Iris, investigative journalist to her bones. Never change.

"Yeah, he mentions him a lot," Barry says. "Mick. He likes to cook, apparently works wonders with making vegetables edible, really likes ninja movies, had a rat for a pet one time...and, uh, rather coincidentally enough, is also in a coma right now -"

Iris actually snorts coffee up her nose at that.

"You live an interesting life, Barry Allen," she says a few minutes later, when she's finally recovered. "A very interesting life."

"You have no idea," Barry says, wishing now more than ever that he hadn't promised Joe that he wouldn't tell Iris about the whole Flash thing. Especially given... "Besides, enough about my interesting life, tell me about your interesting life! Working with the police at last, huh?"

"That'll show Dad for dissuading me from going to police academy," Iris laughs. "But yes! Official consultant to a CCPD task force! I'm actually getting paid - well, peanuts, but still. Resume-wise, this is huge."

"I'm really glad for you," Barry says, because if it was anything else, he really would be, and he is, it's just, well..."The Anti-Flash Task Force, though? I thought you liked what the Flash was doing."

"Well, realistically, writing a blog about the Flash isn't exactly going to get me a job with the anti-organized crime task force," Iris says dryly. "So that's one reason. Besides, that name is misplaced. I _do_ support what the Flash is doing, and that's why I'm doing my best to keep him from getting arrested."

Barry's eyebrows shoot up. "Arrested? For what? Stopping some crimes? I thought they just wanted to _stop_ him, not arrest him."

Seriously, what is with Captain Cold? Barry takes his eyes off of him for five minutes and suddenly the guy's put sending Barry to jail on the table?!

"It's really more of an analysis sort of thing," Iris says. "Captain Snart wants evidence either for or against the Flash - is he doing good things for the city, or is he using his abilities to commit crimes?"

" _Crimes_?"

"Well, _I_ certainly don't think he is!" Iris exclaims. "He's clearly just trying to help - getting to crime scenes before the police can, disarming dangerous criminals...he's a hero!"

"I'm really glad you think that," Barry says sincerely. It means a lot to know that Iris is on his side, however unknowingly.

Iris eyes him beadily. "I thought you wanted me to stop writing about him because he could be anybody and I didn't know anything about him."

Oops.

"I was worried you'd be in danger because of it," Barry says quickly. "Who knows what sorts of enemies a guy like the Flash has, right? But you have police protection now, so it's, uh, different."

"Well, that's true," Iris concedes. "Though seriously, Bar, worrying about me being 'in danger'? I know you mean well, but you sound like Dad - and not in a good way. It's just like the police academy thing; if _you'd_ wanted to go, it'd be fine, great, amazing, even better than the CSI stuff you were actually into, but the second _I_ wanted to, it's suddenly too dangerous. And you didn't even want to go!"

Barry remembers that fight. It'd been one for the ages.

"It's just so frustrating," Iris continues. "I know Dad's old school, but sometimes it feels like he thinks he can just ignore reality by just saying that. Oh, women can take dangerous jobs now? Sorry, I'm too old school to believe in that -"

"It's not that," Barry objects, even though it maybe kinda sorta is, at least a little. Iris' curfew was several hours earlier than Barry's throughout their teen years, and it wasn't only because she was more of a party person than he was. "He's your dad, you're his kid. He's just being protective."

"You mean _over_ protective," Iris says. "I know that he loves me and that he means well, but sometimes it feels like he puts a higher premium on his idea of what 'protecting' me looks like than he does on respecting who I actually am. I want to be an investigative journalist, Barry! _Investigative_! I'm not going to be sitting in a nice cozy office writing a fashion column or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but it's not _me_. So yes, sometimes I'm going to do something a little dangerous - and I need to know that he'll support me, instead of trying to get in my way."

"I support you," Barry offers, internally wincing. "You know that."

"I do," she says. "It just sometimes feels like you think he's right, especially when it comes to this Flash stuff."

"Well..."

"No, Barry," Iris says firmly. "I'm a fully grown woman, capable of making my own choices. I don't appreciate being treated like some sort of dumb porcelain doll that's going to shatter if I'm not kept on a shelf! It's _offensive_ , that's what it is! How the hell does Dad expect me to become an investigative journalist when he feels free to just, ugh, _lie_ to me and say something stupid like how it's for 'my own good' - can you _believe_ that macho bullshit?"

"...no?" Barry squeaks. Oh, man, he knew he never should've have let himself listen to Joe about whether he could tell Iris about his Flash stuff. God, she's going to _eviscerate_ him when she finds out the truth.

Or, even worse, she'll be _disappointed_.

Maybe even want to take a short break from their friendship while she thinks over whether she wants to forgive him at all...

Barry's so screwed. 

"At least Eddie doesn't buy into that crap," Iris says, luckily too invested in her rant to notice Barry slowly descending into a spiral of his own shame. "He supports my career, and my interests, and he lets me decide what I'm comfortable with. He's going to be open with me about all the information about the disappearances, giving me access to all the case files and -"

"Hold on a second," Barry says, looking up again. "Disappearances? What disappearances?"

"That's what the task force is investigating right now," Iris says. "There's been a string of disappearances over the last few months -"

"I know about those; I'm processing some of those scenes," Barry says. "Captain Cold thinks they’re related to the Flash? Why?"

"Captain _Snart_ , Barry," Iris says. "He's actually quite charming -" They say evil usually is. "- and pretty cute, too; if you weren't already dating that Len guy you met at Jitters, then I'd totally be trying to hook you up." 

Barry? Hook up with a _supervillain_? No way.

"Well, too bad, I'm taken," Barry says firmly. "Now: the Flash?"

"Well, you see, Captain Snart's assistant - her name is Kara, Kara Danvers, _also_ very cute - seriously, are we having an embarrassment of riches or something now that we're both dating someone? -"

"Iris. Focus."

"Right. Well, Kara started pulling together reports and complaints that could be related to the Flash - sightings of lightning on clear days, the sound of something moving fast, that sort of thing - and those sightings seems to line up with these disappearances." 

Barry didn't know that. 

Iris makes a face. “That includes Mason – Mason Bridges, do you remember him? He hired me for that internship at the CCPN?”

“The one you called an asshole the first day and started to like after the first week?” Barry says, smiling at the memory. “Yeah, I remember; you were super pissed when he –”

Disappeared.

Right.

“Wait, that was correlated with a Flash sighting?” Barry asks. _He'd_ certainly had nothing to do with that. 

“I’m not totally sure about that one,” Iris confesses. “We’re still following up on the various leads. Still, Captain Snart thinks the correlation is suspicious and, well, I can’t blame him for thinking that; it’s probably the first thing I’d think, too –”

Except she doesn’t because she really likes the Flash and would never believe such a bad thing about him…right?

Barry really, really hopes he’s right. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Iris’ confidence, even if she doesn’t know it's him behind the mask.

“– but Eddie thinks the Flash might be investigating the disappearances," Iris continues. "I think that makes sense - don't you?"

"Definitely," Barry says. Even if it hadn't _previously_ been true, it's definitely going to be true _now_. Thank you Eddie! 

"You'll help me prove it, right?" Iris presses. "Captain Snart's basically agreed that I get to look for information showing he's innocent while he looks for information proving his guilt -"

Conveniently resulting in Captain Cold having access to all the information he wants, courtesy of Iris' excellent detective skills.

Or, well, excellent detective skills when she knows there's something worth investigating. Barry's pretty sure the only reason she hasn't figured out that he's the Flash is because she so thoroughly believes that he would tell her something important like that that the fact that he _hasn't_ is actually evidence against it being true.

...ouch. Way to self-guilt-trip there, Barry.

"Of course I'll help," Barry promises. "I'll look through the forensic reports on those disappearances when I get back to the office after lunch."

"Uh, speaking of which, I hate to mention this, but isn't your lunch break usually only 30 minutes...?"

Barry freezes.

"Because between you helping me with those errands earlier and the line at Jitters and everything, it's been nearly an hour..." Iris says apologetically.

"Crap!"

Luckily, after he bids goodbye to Iris, Barry's able to speed all the way back to his lab by going up the wall and through the window. There's no way his lateness wasn't noticed, unfortunately, but at least this way there's some ambiguity as to exactly _how_ late he was getting back.

He's about to open the files on the disappearances when he gets a call from Cisco. 

"Hey, man, where are you?" Cisco asks.

"At...work?"

"You were supposed to come help us brainstorm about why the Man in Yellow wanted that tachyon emitter, remember?"

"Oh, crap," Barry says. "I totally blanked; I'm sorry - Iris wanted to go out for coffee -"

"Hey, no problem, I know how it can be," Cisco laughs. "Can you come over for a bit, though? Wells is in a Mood - you know how he gets when he feels like we're making no progress."

Actually, Barry doesn't know - he isn't as familiar with Wells-the-impatient-genius as he is with Wells-the-encouraging-and-remorseful-mentor, since he's almost always only seen the latter - but he's not going to say as much. 

He eyes the work on his desk and makes a face. Even at superspeed - which he promised himself he'd stop with! - if he takes another break now, he'll have trouble finishing it all unless he stays late.

"I can come over now for a little, but I'll have to skip actual patrolling this evening," Barry decides. "Can you be on main radio duty so you can call me in case something happens?"

"You bet! See you in a Flash!"

That _never_ gets old.

(He goes out the window again. Sorry, job! He'll start doing better soon, he promises!)

When Barry makes it to STAR Labs, Wells is in fact in a bit of a temper, snapping at Caitlin about her results, but he leaves off once he sees that Barry's there. Barry guesses it's because he thinks they can make more progress on finding the Man in Yellow with Barry there, though still, there's no reason to be yelling at Caitlin.

Though to be fair, he did get assaulted by the Man in Yellow when they tried to trap him using the (now stolen) tachyon emitter as bait; he's probably just in pain.

"About time, Mr. Allen," Wells says, which is unusually snappish for him - he's almost never curt like that. Well, with Barry, at least. Is Barry the teacher's pet? He’s never really been the teacher’s pet before. "I believe we've figured out why the Man in Yellow went after the tachyon emitter - Cisco, show him the model -"

To be entirely honest, it's not _entirely_ a surprise to find out that the tachyon emitter will make the Man in Yellow even faster.

"Great," Barry sighs. He wishes, in retrospect, that they had brought in the CCPD to help protect the emitter instead of insisting on doing it privately in an attempt to avoid Captain Cold’s attention. Maybe if the CCPD’d been involved, they wouldn’t have lost out on the emitter and the Man in Yellow wouldn't have been made even faster. "Like he couldn't beat me hands-down already."

"On the contrary, Mr. Allen," Wells says, his eyes avid. "I believe this to be a good sign."

"How?" Cisco asks.

"As you pointed out, the Man in Yellow is faster than Mr. Allen already - why resort to a device to get additional speed? Answer: because Mr. Allen is starting to catch up more than he'd like. If Mr. Allen focuses seriously and exclusively on his speed for the next few weeks -"

"As exclusively as possible," Barry corrects.

Wells looks a little exasperated. "Mr. Allen, I mean this as kindly as possible, but what could possibly be more important than catching your mother's murderer?"

Ouch.

What is _with_ people and poking at Barry's soft spots today?

"It's not that," he objects. Of course he wants to catch the Man in Yellow! He wants it more than anything! But at the same time, he can't give up his entire _life_ to do nothing but speed training. "Besides, Cisco’s right that I make my best breakthroughs in terms of speed while fighting criminals, not with training, so it's not like it even makes sense for me to devote myself to training full-time -"

Wells looks annoyed which, jeez, the whole point of this is to stop bad guys, right? Sometimes it feels like Wells gets too caught up in the academic question of "how fast can Barry go" and stops thinking about their actual goals here. Seriously, as long as Barry's fast enough, he doesn't have to be even faster.

"He is right," Caitlin says, shrinking away when Wells gives her a blistering look. "Barry's pretty task-oriented; it makes sense to balance training with actual crime-fighting."

"Plus there's my job," Barry says. 

"Mr. Allen -"

"It's my _job_!" Barry protests. "If I don't do it, I get fired. If I get fired, I don't have an income or health insurance or anything, then I have to spend all my time job hunting, and that means I'll be doing _even less_ on improving my speed!"

"Understood, Mr. Allen," Wells says, though he still sounds testy. "But it does seem as though you've been spending quite a bit more time at work than in previous weeks -"

"I'm following up on a lead with Captain Cold," Barry protests, then wonders why they're even having this conversation. It's his job! It's obviously non-negotiable, except in situations where someone is in active and present danger! Wells is acting like Barry should just put in the bare amount of face-time required and cheat on the rest with his speed so that he can devote his entire _life_ to nothing but speed-speed-speed as if that was his only priority!

Ugh, rich people. They just don’t understand the concept of employment.

"Not to mention the importance of having some rest time in order to improve his mental capacity alongside his physical endurance," Caitlin adds. "Even with Barry's increased metabolism, he still does need to relax - not just sleep, but to do things other than just work. So it makes sense to take time out of training to hang out and go on dates -"

Barry can't help the dumb grin.

"I see," Wells says, suddenly amused. "And how is the lovely Miss West doing?"

"She's great," Barry says. "I saw her just now - sorry, that's why I ditched, she's been busy for _ages_ and suddenly she had time - and she's doing really great."

"Is she still seeing - ah - Detective Thawne, or have you made inroads there?" Wells inquires, smirking a little.

Inroads...?

"Oh! Oh, no; she's still with Eddie. Definitely still with Eddie," Barry says quickly. "And, you know, he's a good guy, you know? I shouldn't have tried to get in between them. I'm not dating Iris; I wouldn't - _she_ wouldn't, not while she's with Eddie. No way, no how."

"Barry's been seeing Cool Coffee Guy instead," Caitlin says, grinning. "How's that been going, Barry?"

Barry grins at her. "Uh, _amazing_? We just had our third date, it was - ugh, it was so good. He's basically perfect."

"No one's perfect, Mr. Allen," Wells says. He's suddenly frowning again, which is weird - he was totally happy to hear about Barry's love life when he thought it was Iris. Latent homophobia, maybe? Barry hopes not; that would be super awkward. "Is it entirely a good idea to be seeing this, er, 'coffee guy' seriously while you still carry a torch for Miss West?"

A torch for? Seriously?

"How else is he supposed to get over her?" Cisco points out. "Put it up man, good for you!"

They high-five.

"Soooo, date three," Cisco adds. "Does that mean..?"

"No, no," Barry says, laughing. "We're moving slow - yes, I know, the irony - and it's good for both of us. I need to get over myself about Iris - we actually just talked about that today -"

"You talked with Iris about it? Really?" Caitlin asks. "What did she say?"

"She's happy that I'm happy -"

"I'm not sure it seems entirely wise to me, Mr. Allen," Wells butts in, which, uh, Barry appreciates the advice and all, but he's not taking love life advice from a guy who kinda reminds him of his dad. Look what happened when he took advice from Joe! "Entering into a serious relationship while you have a significant emotional entanglement with Miss West -"

"No, no, it's okay," Barry assures him. "Len understands - he's got a best friend he cares about deeply, too, like me and Iris. Well, not exactly like, but close enough."

"Len," Wells murmurs.

"Really, dude?" Cisco says, arching his eyebrows. "You sure he's not cheating or something?"

"I'm sure," Barry says. "He and Mick - that's the other guy - they're just best friends. Besides, Mick's in a coma right now after an, uh, an accident, so -"

Cisco's face clears. "Oh, yeah, that's fine then. Go Barry! You're basically Eddie Thawne-ing the guy -"

"Not a verb," Caitlin groans.

Barry fist-bumps Cisco anyway. 

"Len and Mick," Wells says again, looking thoughtful. 

"Yeah," Barry says. "That's their names."

"I see." Wells suddenly shakes his head. "My apologies; I knew a Len and a Mick once - at a time far removed from the present. They were part of a, er, group that I rather enjoyed watching. Forgive me; I was just recalling them ."

"You used to watch live bands?" Cisco says, putting a hand over his heart. "You, Dr. Wells? I'm not sure I can handle the shock."

Wells snorts. "Indeed. At any rate, if Mr. Allen has a limited time before he returns to work, then we should make the most of it -"

Barry does eventually have to use speed to get through that evening's workload, despite his resolution to do things right. He feels bad about it, but promises himself that he'll do better going forward - he just has a lot on his plate, with the Man in Yellow and all.

Not really an excuse that would appease, say, the family of the murder victim he's working the scene of, though.

Barry takes care not to speed through the analysis portion, at least. It's nearly midnight before he can go home, and he comes in early to finish.

Good thing he has that ridiculous metabolism now.

He finishes it all around mid-morning and hesitates. He _should_ reach out to Cisco and Caitlin and Dr. Wells now, to tell them he's caught up on his work and has some free time to work on his speed, but he's still a little pissed about the way Wells just disregarded his job - his very important job! - as unimportant compared to science and speed. And bringing Barry's mom into it like that? Not okay.

Still, if he doesn't have anything else to be doing before the new workload arrives...

No, wait, he promised Iris he'd look at those disappearances. That'll definitely kill the few hours before the new day's work finds its way to his inbox, and then he can do that. He'll head over to STAR Labs for training in the afternoon.

He texts "Doing Iris a favor, won't be able to make it till 5" to the STAR Labs group, since even Wells seems understanding about Iris, and settles in to review those files again.

He's about three in when he remembers why he set aside these particular files.

They're the ones with Chemical X.

The one that Gila said was like having a jet engine run around Central City. The one that Barry suspected might come from a speedster, only to dismiss it because he knew for a fact that it couldn't have been him at all of these instances because of the time period -

But now he knows that there's _another_ speedster in Central City.

The Man in Yellow.

If his suspicions are right and this is in fact the residue of a speedster's run, then that means the Man in Yellow could be the one behind these disappearances. 

And if he can figure out what connects them, then he might be able to figure out what the Man in Yellow is up to. He can actually start tracking him down instead of just futilely training his speed without ever making any actual progress in catching the guy. 

He has a _lead_.

"Thank you, Iris," Barry murmurs, settling into his seat and shifting into full focus mode. 

He's going to science the _shit_ out of this mystery.


	11. 11

Len had been having such a good day before this, too. 

Allen (Barry, you should call him Barry - but not yet) was knee deep in CSI work, so he hadn't had time for a proper date, but they'd been texting and had met briefly to go for coffee once or twice and then again a couple of days later for lunch. All in nice, well-lit places that appeased Danvers. 

Thawne reported that he and Iris were making some progress in their investigation of the disappearances, mostly interviewing people who'd submitted complaints that appeared Flash-related. They’d exhausted the list of people who’d complained to the CCPD and had gone to the mayor’s office to dig into the complaint archive there in case there were others. 

Danvers had shaken his tree of contacts on his behalf and continued to find no evidence of Allen's corruption in relation to any Family, although his involvement with STAR Labs in some capacity was at this point undeniable.

He still hadn't gotten a warrant for STAR Labs (oh, did he ever want a warrant!), but the pile of evidence he was going to use to apply for one was growing nicely.

And then he'd come here and his world had fallen apart.

"So what's that mean?" Len asks through lips that feel like they've gone numb. "Does that mean - are you saying we gotta -"

"No, no," Dr. Callahan assures him. She's a competent-looking Latina woman in her thirties, whose usually mildly distracted air could turn into razor-sharp focus at a moment's notice. Len had picked her to be Mick's primary physician because he'd been oddly comforted by her habit of always carrying a small, thick paperback in her coat pocket. "We're nowhere near the point of needing to make end-of-life decisions."

Len nods shakily. That's good. Because if they asked him to pull the plug on Mick, he's not sure what he'd do.

Shoot himself next, maybe.

"I just wanted to be clear with you about timeline," Callahan continues, gently but firmly. "He's still well within the boundaries of a plausible coma, but given how well his burns are progressing, we're starting to get to the end of where we feel comfortable assisting with medical induction. But the more we phase it out, the less positive the signs are."

"What's that mean?" Len asks again. "Does it mean there ain't no hope of him waking up?"

"There's always hope," she says. "But this next month or so is probably crucial: he either wakes up on his own, or we have to start seriously considering the possibility that he won't wake up at all and adjusting his care accordingly. And that means discussing what might be the best care going forward, which does include end-of-life options."

Len nods dully. Mick hadn't had a DNR order on file, the idiot, but Len knew he didn't want to be one of those unfortunate creatures kept alive by machines years after all hope was extinguished. 

He'd made that clear to Callahan, and that's what she was referring to: if Mick didn't wake up, they were going to talk about - to talk about -

Len's killed men before. Some women, too, if they were rotten - never children, despite a few jokes about wanting to strangle particularly loud ones.

He's never killed a friend before.

"I wanted to discuss this with you now so that you had time to get yourself ready, should the worst come to pass," Callahan says. She's sympathetic, he can tell, but she knows him well enough by now to know that he wouldn't appreciate any expressions of that sympathy. "We're going to do everything we can this month - pull out all the stops, so to speak - but in the end, it's going to be up to him."

Len nods mutely. His hand has somehow found Mick's on the bed, through no intention of his own, and he's squeezing it hard enough that his knuckles have gone white.

Callahan says some other things, more reassurance that there are still things they have to try, but he mostly tunes her out and eventually she goes away and leaves him there.

"Mick," he whispers, and his voice is scratchy. "Mick."

He hasn't really faced up to the idea of Mick not waking up. Oh, he's thrown in an "if" in his thoughts and words, but he's never really believed it. 

His whole life is still centered around the belief that Mick will wake up one day: Danvers' increasingly long group chat of updates on Len's life, meant for Mick to one day read; his ridiculous crush and now possible-relationship with Allen, meant for Mick to learn of and hopefully approve...

His revenge, meant as a gift to help convince Mick to forgive him all his lies. 

All dreams. All hopes.

All dust in his mouth.

He's never going to talk to Mick again. Never get the benefit of his kindness, his crass humor, his understated wisdom and insight into the human soul. Into Len's soul. He's never going to hear Mick lecture him on his health, on eating his vegetables, on not hanging out with Charlie too much. He's never -

There's still hope, Callahan said. Still hope.

He just can't see it right now.

It's a bad night.

Allen tries to text, but Len turns off his text notifications. Danvers calls, but he hangs up on her - not that that stops her from actually coming and banging on his window, but he snarls at her to go away and she does. Even Lisa calls - at Danvers' encouragement, no doubt - and Len's sense of duty as an older brother makes him pick up, but he doesn't actually say anything more than "This ain't a good time, Lise," and remaining otherwise mute.

Hearing her voice does help a little, though. 

It helps enough that when Danvers shows up to escort him to work the next morning, jaw set in a manner that suggests refusal isn't an option, he agrees to go. 

Work will be good, he thinks. Thinking certainly isn't doing any favors.

It doesn't work.

Len spends the morning staring down at the paperwork he's supposed to be filling out with an overwhelming feeling of despair. He knows he's doing good work, necessary work, vital work cleaning up the city police into something worthy of the name, but what good is it, really, if Mick's not going to be around to see that Len being a cop isn't actually all that bad?

_When you have nothing, you still have your duty_ , he reminds himself, and forces himself to pick up the pen. _You still have your city, which you love._

Paperwork isn't really doing it for him today, though. Necessary, yes, but he's already gone as far as he can right now - the DAs won't take any new cases out of his backlog unless he can prove something truly egregious, and there's only so many subpoenas and wiretapping warrants he can fill out.

He needs _action_.

That's why it's a relief when Iris sweeps into his office in the early afternoon, taking one look at him and announcing, "You look like reheated crap."

"Reheat crap often, do you?" Danvers asks grumpily from her desk. She's been stressing about him since last night; she's entitled to a bad mood. "We usually just flush it away, here."

Iris is surprised into a snort, which interrupts the entrance line she'd no doubt had lined up. "Okay," she says. "That was a good one. That was really good. A+ for both timing and delivery."

Danvers smiles a bit at that. "Captain Snart's not exactly feeling up to company right now," she adds.

"Captain Snart is right fucking here," Len says through gritted teeth. 

"See?" Danvers tells Iris, who nods.

"I just need something really quick, I promise," Iris says, shifting over to speak to Len directly. "Eddie got pulled away on a precinct-wide thing going on today - something about a gorilla? I'm not sure - and I wanted to follow up on a lead that I got, but he insisted I clear it with you first. We all good?"

Len, not being an idiot, blinks slowly at her. "Funny," he says. "Nowhere in that sentence did you actually inform me of what lead you're intending on following up, where, and what you're planning on doing that Detective Thawne sent you here first."

"Damn," she says mildly. "You're sharp as a tack, aren’t you? Okay, fine. I want to go question a guy who supposedly got fired from STAR Labs right before the Particle Accelerator went live. I found his name in Mason's notes."

Mason Bridge - that was the newspaper editor from Iris' internship, the one that had been her supervisor. He'd been one of the more recent disappearances. 

"I thought all his notes had disappeared along with him," Len says. "What with him being paranoid over anyone getting a glimpse at them."

"Says the hypocrite," Danvers coughs.

"So did I," Iris says, smirking at Danvers. "But then it occurred to me - after talking with Kara here, actually! - that he might've asked one of the CCPN secretaries for some help with them at some point during his career, and one of them was actually able to show me a secret nook in his office where he kept some files in the event of a fire. Sadly not all of them, but it did have this one guy's name. That's something, right?"

"That sounds like a very promising lead," Len says.

"That's what I thought!"

"What's the guy's name?"

"No way," Iris says. "I'm not telling you that; you might try to assign the follow-up to someone else. I’m tired of sitting around in the mayor’s office’s archives digging through papers; this is my only leverage to make sure that _I_ get to go."

She's not wrong. Len appreciates that, even if it’s annoying.

"Makes sense," he says.

"So you approve?" she asks hopefully.

"Why don't you tell me why Detective Thawne wanted you to ask my permission before following up on it, first," Len says wryly, "and then we'll see?"

Iris is a positive sneak; he likes that in a person.

She makes a face at him. "Well, this individual - er - may or may not be - uh - living in the Keystone slums."

Len arches his eyebrows. "Where in the slums?"

"...near Leopold Ave."

"Ah, yes," Len says. "Now it all makes sense. I have no idea why Detective Thawne might have any hesitation about letting you go down to _Murderers' Row_ all by your lonesome."

"...so that's a no, then," Iris concludes.

"Oh, no, I think it's a great idea," Len says. "In fact, I'll go along with you."

"What? No!" Danvers exclaims. "Are you _crazy_?"

"Danvers -"

"Don't you 'Danvers' me! Do you have a memory problem or something, where you can't remember that the Families are trying to kill you? Murderers' Row is prime Family territory!"

"Technically not -"

"Only because no one wants to deal with disciplining it! Just because it's too unorganized to be properly called organized crime does meant that -"

"I need to do something," Len says flatly. Something about his voice makes Danvers pause and look at him warily. "This will do just fine."

"...fine," she says. "Will you at _least_ wear the -"

"I ain't wearing the mask to Murderers' Row," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Keystone ain't Central like that; they'd shoot me just for hiding my face."

"But -"

"No. And that's final."

"Fine!" she exclaims, crossing her arms and glaring hard enough that Len fancies that he can feel the hair on the back of his arms crisping up again. Danvers has a good glare. "But I'm coming with you."

"I don't think taking _either_ of you is a good idea," Iris says. "Snart, you're wanted by the Families, and Danvers, listen, it's dangerous -"

"What, and it's not dangerous for _you_? You're literally a civilian!"

Technically, as admin staff, so is Danvers, but Len's not dumb enough to say as much.

"One person can more easily escape notice than two -"

"If by 'escape notice' you mean 'get kidnapped and sold into human trafficking,' which I suppose is one way to interpret that phrase, albeit an uncommon one," Len says dryly. "No. We all go, or I go, and those are our only options. And Danvers, if you really want to do this - which you don't have to -"

"I know that, and I'm doing it anyway," she says stubbornly.

"- then at the very least I insist you take a service weapon with you," Len continues. "I don't care if you don't like guns."

"Fine. But I get hazard pay for this!"

"Of course you get hazard pay for this," Len says. 

Danvers blinks at him. "I - wasn't expecting that to actually work. I really get hazard pay?"

"Why not? This is what hazard pay was meant for."

"Can _I_ get -" Iris starts.

"You're a consultant, it was your idea in the first place, and you're basically blackmailing us into taking you along with us by threatening to withhold the witness' name," Len points out. He likes people with spirit, but even he has reasonable limits. "No hazard pay, you take a stun gun, and if we all survive, I'll _consider_ giving you a bonus in retrospect. And if you ever try to blackmail anyone over anything bigger than a ridealong, I’ll crush you like a gnat."

"...understood,” Iris says. “Also, a stun gun, seriously? I’m a cop’s kid; I can handle a real gun -"

"And until you can handle it to my satisfaction on a police shooting range, you take the stun gun," Len says firmly. He was a cop’s kid, too, and while he’ll allow that it typically provides some knowledge of how to use a gun, it doesn’t instill significant confidence in a person’s ability to know when _not_ to use a gun, which is more his area of concern. "Now, we're wasting daylight. Shall we catch a ride into Keystone?"

The original taxi they catch takes them into the center of downtown, which is as close as the driver is willing to go to Murderers' Row. Len can't blame him; the area's awful at the best of times, and the times following the devastation wrought by the Particle Accelerator could hardly be considered the best of times. 

"We can't walk there from here," Iris objects. "It'd take us over an hour even _without_ factoring in Snart's crutches, and - all jokes about stupid bravery aside - I don't want to be stuck here past sundown."

"No problem," Len says. "Why'd you think I asked him to take us to the corner of Rundown Street?"

Iris glances at the street sign with a frown. "It's called _Sundown_ Street -"

A car zooms them by at illegally high speeds, coming out of nowhere on a sharp turn, passing close enough for the wind to buffet them. It's followed a second later by another one.

If they'd been even a single step off the curve, they'd be dead.

"Like I said," Len says wryly. "Rundown Street. Otherwise known as the most popular drag racing strip inside Keystone City proper. C'mon, we're not far from the finish line - we'll be able to get one of the losers to give us a ride if we pay his loser's fee."

"Loser's fee?" Danvers asks.

"The buy-in amount," Len says. "Not too expensive, but more than most drivers can afford - but it can be waived if you're willing to bet your car as collateral."

"I get it," Iris says. "We save someone's car - and their livelihood - and they drive us wherever we want. That's...kind of cold-blooded."

"Well," Len drawls. "They _do_ call me Captain Cold, you know."

"I bet they wouldn't if they knew how much you enjoyed it," Iris says, but she's grinning.

Their selected driver turns out to be a young African-American man on the verge of college age, who goes by the street name "Wally Wheeler", and he's incredibly grateful about them saving his car.

"I'm trying to save up money for my mom's medical treatments," he explains to a sympathetic Iris and Danvers. "I got a part-time job at first, but it didn't make enough. And I was good at this, so..."

"As long as you stick to racing," Len says. "Those sort of problems are what lead people to the Families, but if you go there, you'll get trouble you won't get out of."

"Isn't racing _also_ illegal?" Iris asks, giving Len a look.

Len shrugs. As vices go, racing's far from the worst one to have.

"The boss is a big believer in victimless crime," Danvers tells Iris, sounding long-suffering. "He thinks it's a panacea against crimes that _do_ have victims, like the corruption involved with and caused by Family work. Also, don't ask what he considers to be 'victimless', it'll just turn into a rant about the modern state of property insurance."

"Chattel insurance," Len mutters under his breath. 

"That's not necessarily wrong, though," Wally - Len refuses to call any human being 'Wheeler' - says. "About the difference between petty law-breaking like drag-racing and, well, worse stuff than that. I know lots of guys that do stupid stuff and justify it on the basis that at least it's not the Family biz."

"Hmm," Iris says. "That's interesting. Tell me, would you consider letting me interview you..?"

"Yeah, sure, if you'd be willing to get tested for bone marrow compatibility for my mom," Wally says. "One interview if you get tested, and if you’re a match, well, I'll do all the interviews you want."

"Deal," Iris says. "Danvers, what about you? Want to get tested together?"

"I can't," Danvers says apologetically. "Medical issue. But I have a really, really rare blood type, so I wouldn't be a match anyway."

"Snart?"

"My doc says she's the only one allowed to stick me with needles for the foreseeable future," Len says, waggling his crutch pointedly. Giving blood after getting shot in a dirty warehouse is just asking to potentially spread some sort of blood-borne disease, even if the tests have come up negative so far. "Anyway, Wally, about that ride – we need to go to Murderers' Row."

Wally's eyebrows go straight up. "You gotta death wish or something?"

"We need to talk to someone there," Iris says. "You don't have to stay -"

"Are you joking? Of course he has to stay," Len says. "How do you expect us to get _out_ again?"

"But -"

"No, it's cool," Wally says. "Your man here looks like he can handle himself - you're packing, right?"

"Of course."

Wally nods. "Then I'll stick around. I've never been in Murderers' Row long enough to see what it looks like."

"Me either," Iris says, sounding excited.

Len blinks at them. "It's a slum," he says blankly. "It doesn't look like anything."

Danvers pats him on the back. "The guy with a ranking system for different prisons doesn't get to throw stones here, boss."

...it's not _his_ fault Iron Heights sucks balls. Or that Len has a multipage spreadsheet to prove it. 

Murderers' Row, on the other hand, is just your average old slum: ratty dirty buildings halfway or more to falling apart, shoddy half-hearted repairs, people hanging around looking at each other suspiciously, everyone packing more heat than a summer's day - lead in the walls, dirt in the water, and violence in the air.

Len feels at home already.

"You're humming, boss."

"Nice to be back in the old parts of town," Len says. "Though of course this don't have anything on Central's slums - now _there's_ a prime bit of slum territory -"

A member of the local gangs - not Family, just a local - who was oh-so-casually loitering ever closer to them, hand on the gun in his pocket in the event of their being either a threat or unwary prey, gives out a snort at that, his shoulders dropping. 

"Shoulda known a Middleman'd be the only one dumb enough to bring two bits into Murderers' Row," he says, friendly enough. 

"What, and after all the effort I went getting one of each color, too?" Len replies, smirking back even as his voice drops back into the comfortable nasal drawl he grew up with. "Archboys got no taste - and no discernment, neither, if you think these here are bits. You really think I'd come here with one leg and no protection?"

The gang member nods amiably. Like most low-level thugs, he's willing to give the benefit of the doubt to just about anything he doesn't understand - and the idea of a slum kid like Len showing up with crutches and two pretty ladies ripe for kidnapping is just ludicrous enough that he's willing to believe that Danvers and Iris are both enforcers hidden in sheep's clothing. 

"Don't start nothing," the guy still says in warning, clearly more reflexively than anything else, and heads back to rejoin his gang.

Iris does Len the tremendous favor of waiting until he's gone to ask, in an undertone, "Middleman? Archboys?"

"Middlemen are Central City slum kids, born and raised," Len tells her. "Archboys are the same but for Keystone. There isn't an official divide, of course, but everyone's got their loyalty, what with the two cities being so close."

"And bits?" Danvers asks. "What's that mean?"

"Uh," Len says.

"Whores," Wally says, amused. "Except your guy here somehow convinced him that we must all actually be really dangerous because it'd be too stupid to come here otherwise."

Len shrugs modestly. He's always had a gift for bullshit. "Now's your turn," he says to Iris. "The name?"

"Hartley Rathaway," Iris says.

Len's eyebrows shoot up. He's not the only one.

"I know, I know, a Rathaway here of all places; it sounds dumb," Iris says, seeing his expression. "But he was disowned by his family after he came out and then blackballed from the scientific research industry after getting fired from STAR Labs, and Mason'd traced him here."

"Well," Len says. "At least he'll be easy to find."

"Not without street numbers," Iris says, scowling at the rundown buildings. 

"Who needs street numbers when you've got cardboard?" Len asks. "Wait here."

He hobbles over to the nearest outpost of the cardboard brigade - not far, there's a nice alleyway where a handful of homeless people are congregating. 

Len likes the cardboard brigade. His usual contact – a crazy ageless woman called the Mad Magpie that likes to hang around the police precinct, thus the ‘crazy’ moniker – likes him back, and that usually means he can ask for favors other people wouldn’t get. In this case, he gives them the usual set of passwords and asks for the courtesy of an hour's head start before they start spreading his name and face around. 

They agree cheerfully and direct him to one of the buildings on the street, the one with a green door and boarded-up windows.

Their target supposedly resides on the third floor.

"This is _wild_ ," Wally murmurs, staring at the entranceway to the building with some trepidation. "I can't believe you're going to go interview a guy in Murderers' Row, ex-millionaire's kid or not. You journalists have got some serious balls."

Len decides not to correct Wally's misapprehension as to their profession, as cops are as little liked here as anywhere in the slums. Besides, that comment was mostly aimed at Iris, who is, in fact, a journalist.

...technically.

Being a blogger counts, right?

Len struggles up the steps. The slums are not exactly handicap-friendly, to say the least, but at least he has Danvers' strong arm and excellent sense of discretion to help get him there. 

By the time they're on the third floor landing, he's breathing hard and both Iris and Wally have identical worried expressions.

Literally identical, actually; Len wonders if they're related. Sadly, there's probably no polite way to ask Iris if her dad happens to have any illegitimate kids out there.

"You sure you're -" Iris starts.

"I'm fine," Len says, catching his breath. "What's all that PT for if not for climbing stairs and interrogating witnesses?"

"Assuming this guy's there at all," Wally says.

"That's a good point," Iris says. "He could've been disappeared, too."

Wally looks intrigued. "People have been disappearing? That sounds bad. Can I help?"

"You're already helping," Iris assures him.

"Danvers, how much of a budget do we have for interns?" Len murmurs as quietly as he can, knowing that Danvers' ridiculous bat-ears will hear anything he says as long as there's even the slightest exhalation giving sound to the words.

"You _could_ use having a more reliable driver than _Charlie_ , of all people," she whispers back. "I'll check when we get back to the office, but we can probably make it work."

"S'long as he never intends on being a real cop later in life, it could get him outta some of his current trouble..."

With that settled, Len decides to ignore Iris' attempt to brief Wally on what they know (nothing, but told from a fairly pro-Flash perspective) and knock firmly on the door.

Nothing.

"Danvers?" Len asks.

"There's someone inside," she confirms. "Only one person, as far as I can tell."

"How can you tell?" Wally asks.

"Danvers has ridiculously good hearing," Len says proudly. "The only way she could be more accurate about this sorta thing is if she had X-ray vision."

Danvers flushes.

It’s simultaneously hilarious and rage-inducing (mostly at her family) how shy she is about how awesome she is.

Len knocks again, this time harder. "C'mon," he calls. "We know you're in there, we mean no harm, and anyway, I hear that the price of door replacements on Murderers' Row is _killer_."

Danvers groans, Iris smirks, and Wally stares up at the ceiling like it can give him answers to how he ended up here.

A second later, the door swings open. 

"That was fucking awful," the man inside informs them, smirking. 

Len frowns at the man - about the same height as Len, Caucasian, brunet, and scruffy like he thinks Indiana Jones is a role model, wearing a dark green hoodie and cheap jeans - and says, "I'm gonna assume you _ain't_ Hartley Rathaway."

"No shit," the guy says. He looks vaguely familiar, now that Len thinks about it. "What gave it away, the extra foot of height or the fact that I don't talk rich?"

"The latter," Len says. "Given that I ain't never met the guy in person to know about the rest. He live here?"

“Who wants to know?”

“A nosy asshole,” Len says. “Don’t make me go ask the cardboard brigade to tell me the same thing, okay?”

The guy snorts, acknowledging the point.

“So does Rathaway Jr. live here?” Len prods. 

"Usually, yeah," the guy says, giving in. "He’s my roomie. Ain’t been back in a couple weeks, though."

"He's been disappeared?" Wally exclaims.

The guy gives Wally a weird look. "Or he's just not been here for a couple weeks. It happens sometimes – jobs, laying low, that sorta deal."

"Oh."

"What’s that about people getting disappeared..?"

"Can we come in anyway?" Len interjects, not answering the question. "I could use a chair to crash in before attempting those stairs again."

"Yeah, sure, come in. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"I was just thinking that," Len says. Danvers is shaking her head at him pointedly like she's trying to tell him something, but he's not sure what; he's too busy trying to place the guy. "What's your deal?"

"Usual cut crew work, largely freelance - used to work with my brother -"

"Do you have a _name_ , maybe?" Iris asks, following them inside, even as Len's nodding. “That might help more than your profession.”

The guy flushes, remembering his manners. "Uh, Mark. Mark Mardon. Nice to meet you."

Len snaps his fingers as it comes to him. "The Dollarhyde Street diamond job! The getaway drivers!"

"Holy crap," Mardon says, recognition lighting up his own eyes. " _Leonard Snart?!_ I heard you went straight!"

Danvers puts her head in her hands.

Oh, right. That's what she'd been hinting at him about: Len's a wanted man in criminal circles.

Damnit, Danvers, thirty years a thief and four months a proper cop - he's going to mess up sometimes!

"Uh," Len says, wondering if this is about to escalate into a firefight. 

"You were _badass_ , man," Mardon says admiringly. "We got away clean with the cut from your job with no sweat, and it lasted us nearly a year of good living. One of the best jobs we ever did. You're good people, man; the criminal underworld lost a genius when you turned."

Aw, Len's touched.

Also rather relieved.

(Danvers' shoulders are now shaking with laughter, while Iris and Wally both gape.)

“Always a pleasure to meet a fan,” he says, ignoring his audience. Hopefully they’ll know well enough to stay out of this conversation and leave it entirely to him.

He knows how to talk to criminals.

"Is it true that you sent fifty pigs to jail in one month alone?" Mardon asks eagerly.

Len grins. Being admired for his cop work by criminals is somehow even sweeter than being admired for his top-notch criminal skills. "Almost. Some of 'em refused to plea bargain out and are going to trial - or are supposed to go to trial. They're _begging_ for a plea bargain now."

"Fuckers deserve it," Mardon says fervently. "Every one of 'em. I hate cops."

"Corrupt cops," Len corrects.

"Aren't they all?" Mardon asks.

"Leave me _some_ hope here, please," Len says dryly. "I don't wanna have to start the whole thing from scratch."

"Hey, they're not all bad," Iris protests. "My dad's a cop! So is my boyfriend!"

"Can we keep it down with all this cop talk?" Wally hisses. "My old man was a cop before he ditched my mom, but I don't go around boasting about it! Especially not here of all places!"

Mardon's frowning at Iris. "You’re from Central," he says slowly. "Your dad wouldn't happen to be Joe West, would he?"

"Uh," Iris says instead of confirming it, proving that she's not a total idiot. "Why do you ask?"

"Because Joe West murdered my brother," Mardon says, still frowning suspiciously at Iris. "My baby brother, Clyde - West shot him right in the fucking back. And one day, I'm going to get back at West by murdering someone he loves, too."

"Lucky for us that she’s a Lloyd, not a West, then, ain’t it?" Len interjects, lying his ass off with the name of the first black cop he can think of that isn’t West and extremely uncertain as to whether it's going to work. He wishes he were less surprised that even when he's not part of the investigation, Joe West still manages to fuck everything up. "You know I'm not going to let you do that, right?"

Mardon glances at him, scowling, and then just as Len's considering going for his gun, suddenly relaxes. "Should've figured," he says with a grin. "I know your code against killing civilians; if you had that as a thief, I can't see you changing it as a pig."

Len shrugs. "What can I say? I never much liked the idea of some civilian getting iced just 'cause they happened to have the wrong blood. If the whole world acted like that, I'd've never made it out of the crib before someone would've put me out of my misery to make a point to my old man."

Mardon grunts. "Yeah, I guess," he says reluctantly. "Sure wouldn't've have wanted someone going after Clyde because of some damn stupid thing I did, I guess."

"Exactly," Len says, then hesitates. "You want me to look into hammering West for that shooting?" 

Sadly, he knows it's probably a lost cause if the officer-related shooting's already been resolved by the bureau. They don't reopen stuff like that without evidence of some sort of cover-up or something, and it sounds like Clyde Mardon being shot in the back was pretty public already.

Still… 

"Might not go anywhere,” Len continues, ignoring how Iris is trying to death-glare a hole into his back. She’s got nothing on Danvers. “But at least it's better than you getting sent down for life 'cause you murdered an innocent, yeah? What do you say?"

"No," Mardon says. "Thanks, and I appreciate the offer, but no. I've got a back-up plan in place that ought to show West what for without getting in your crosshairs. Property, not people."

"It'd better stay property not people," Len warns him. "I'm gonna have to tip off the CCPD about this little convo; you'll get pre-med for sure if anyone goes down, and that means the death penalty gets put on the table."

"Yeah, whatever," Mardon says. "The pigs won't be able to stop me even if they tried."

"That's what they all say," Len says wearily. "Now listen, can you help us or not?"

Mardon blinks at him. "Help you? With what?"

"We're looking into some disappearances, most of which seem to happen right around the same time as a Flash sighting," Len says. "We think Rathaway might have some insight. Can you tell him to call when he gets back? And let us know if he _doesn't_ get back?"

"Sure," Mardon says, accepting Len's card. "But only 'cause you go exclusively against cops in your new job. D'Angelo said you were still cool with the trade for the most part."

"D'Angelo also promised to keep his mouth shut," Len says with a sigh. He really hopes Iris doesn’t remember to pay attention to this part of the conversation, but she’s a would-be journalist; he’s sure she will. Well, he always did believe in the philosophy of not doing anything you wouldn’t want to go down for doing later on, and he’s perfectly willing to face the music on this one. After all, working with D'Angelo got him the best lead they’ve had yet on the Flash. "Amateurs. Anyway, I didn't say it before, but I'm real sorry to hear about Clyde; he had a beautiful way with just about anything on four wheels."

Mardon smiles. "That he did. That he did."

Len nods and gets painfully back up to his feet. "Don't suppose you've got anything to add about these disappearances yourself? Or the Flash?"

Mardon snorts. "No. Or, well, yeah: if you don't see anything really big go down by the waterfront in the next few days or so, assume that I've been disappeared, too."

"So noted," Len says, then turns his attention to his small crew, mute and watching. "C'mon, all, we're wasting daylight. We'll hear from Rathaway when or if he comes back."

They follow Len down those horrific stairs – he needs so much more PT than he thought he did before he tried those stairs, but his leg is considering secession in self-defense while his side and spine are basically giant screaming pits of agony – and back out into the street.

"So, that went - uh - interestingly," Danvers says, her voice somehow still cheerful even though she’s looking at Len a little worriedly. "At least we got a heads up about possible violence, right?"

"Honor among thieves," Len says, nodding. "Mardon's a bit old school at heart; he didn't have to give us that much."

"Probably not. And, uh, weird question," Danvers says. "Did anyone else notice how right in the middle of the conversation the weather right outside the window got all -"

"He's going to do something terrible!" Iris explodes. "We have to stop him!"

"We'll tell everyone," Len says soothingly. "Including Detective West; we’ll just get him to avoid the waterfront for a bit. It'll be fine."

"You sure?" Wally asks anxiously. "I mean, I've never met this West guy, and I'm sure he's a total dickbag, but that doesn't mean I want him to get hurt."

"He's not a -" Iris starts, then pauses. "Listen, he's not a _total_ dickbag, okay? Not all the time."

Len would disagree, but whatever. 

"And what do you know about him, anyway?" she continues accusingly. Clearly a believer in the ‘I can criticize him but you can’t’ school of thought, Iris West. "You're not even from Central; you’re from Keystone! He’s never even policed your area – you don’t know anything about him! You don’t have any reason to say anything about him!"

"Yeah, well," Wally says, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. "According to my mom, he's my old man."

"He's _what_?!" Iris shrieks.

Oh, boy. Len'd thought they looked similar, but he hadn't _really_ thought that whole 'illegitimate child' theory had water in it. 

This is going to get unnecessarily emotional fast, he just knows it.

"What do you care?" Wally snaps. "Your old man's Lloyd or whatever; mine's the one at risk!"

"I'm not a Lloyd, I'm a West!" Iris exclaims. "Snart was just lying so I wouldn't get _shot_!"

"Uh, guys?" Danvers says. "Maybe we should be having this out in Murderers' Row?" 

"But," Wally says, then falters. "If you're a West – and if he really is my old man –"

"- then I'm your sister," Iris finishes. "Holy crap. You're my _brother_!"

“Holy crap!”

“ _Holy crap!_ ”

Yeah, Len's done with this.

He gives his best ear-piercing whistle.

All three of them look accusingly at him, clutching their ears. Danvers in particular looks like a sad miserable puppy that’s been betrayed by a surprise visit to the vet or something.

Too bad, so sad.

"Everyone get back in the car," he orders. "You can talk about all this family stuff on the drive back to Central. And maybe let’s do this _before_ we all get shot? The cardboard brigade only promised me an hour before they sold my presence here to the Families."

That, at least, gets everyone moving.

Len resigns himself to the worst car ride ever.


	12. 12

There's a closet at the end of the hallway on the other side of the top floor from Barry's lab. It's little more than a glorified broom closet that sometimes gets used to store samples and evidence that's still being analyzed.

It's small, and dusty, and dark, but it's just large enough to have a small stool big enough to sit on inside (primarily used for going through samples because doing that while crouched over is hell on your back) and that makes it the perfect place to go have anxiety attacks in the middle of the day, if one were so inclined.

Barry is currently so inclined.

The last week or so has been crazy.

Just - legitimately, unbelievably _crazy_.

First there'd been the whole issue with Hartley Rathaway, who they'd barely stopped from destroying STAR Labs with his sonic weaponry a few weeks back. He should've been locked away safely, but he'd managed to trick Cisco into letting him escape from his cell in the Accelerator, and, despite Barry's best efforts to scour the city for him, they'd totally lost track of him after that.

At least he didn't seem intent on re-offending imminently, so there’s that, if nothing else. 

That'd been bad enough, but what followed less than two days later..?

Insane.

Just.

_Insane_.

Where does Barry even _start_ thinking about it?

At the beginning, he supposes: Iris returning from one of her fact-finding missions with the Anti-Flash Task Force with the news that Clyde Mardon, the first meta Barry ever defeated and which Joe had to shoot down, apparently had a brother named Mark Mardon, and that Mark Mardon was planning something in revenge. Something aimed specifically at Joe. 

Iris had also been really weird around Joe but refused to explain why, just saying she was processing some stuff and would tell them both later once she figured out how she felt like reacting about it. Joe thinks it's just her reacting to there being a threat on his life, but Barry's not so sure about that. 

(At least whatever it is wasn't Iris discovering the Flash thing, thank God - she assured Barry in private that whatever was bugging her didn't involve him and was entirely about Joe. He shouldn’t be as relieved by that as he is, but give him a break, he’s not a saint. Man, she is going to _kill him_ when she finds out about the Flash thing, and he's going to deserve it.)

Either way, the CCPD took the threat seriously and began to take actions to protect Joe and guard the waterfront, except their actions weren't anywhere near enough because it turns out that Mark Mardon, like Clyde Mardon, is a weather-controlling meta.

A weather-controlling meta who decided that he was going to get back at Joe West by attacking his precious city, which he did by creating a freaking _tsunami_ using the river. 

A tsunami!

In _Missouri_!

What the hell, man; that's just wrong. 

Barry’s never recommended therapy to a soul in his life, particularly after his own negative experiences as a kid, but seriously, if the choice is between talking through your issues with a therapist and trying to process them with a tsunami, _go with the therapist_!

He’s pretty sure Mardon didn’t expect for the tsunami to get as big as it did, judging by the expression on his face, but whatever he meant to do, what he did end up doing was creating a wave large enough that, if not stopped, would undoubtedly sweep through the entire city and destroy huge swaths of it.

Including the parts that had Iris and Joe and Len and Cisco and Caitlin in them.

Everyone had been utterly frantic, seeing no way to either stop the wave or evacuate the city in time. Based on a crazy last-second suggestion, Barry tried to create a counter-force by running as fast back-and-forth as he could, pushing himself past his limits, but he knew even as he forced himself into pain and beyond that it wasn’t going to be enough.

He wasn't going to be able to stop the tsunami.

And then – he did.

No, not with the counter-force idea; once he had a chance to think about it for a second he realized that it was an incredibly stupid idea to begin with. That didn't work.

What did work, though, was grabbing Mark Mardon out of his hiding place in Keystone City and putting him in the Accelerator before he ever had a chance to launch the tsunami.

Because apparently when Barry runs _that_ fast, he went fast enough to _go back in time_ by a day and stop the whole thing before it ever started.

Mardon problem solved.

Barry just doesn't know what to do about it. 

It, of course, being the fact that he somehow actually _traveled through time_.

Backwards, that is, rather than the usual leisurely forward minute-by-minute progression he and everyone else normally does.

...holy crap, does that mean his "speed" powers might actually be a form of time manipulation? That he's not running "faster" than people, but rather that he's running at regular speed while time slows down around him? 

No, that can't be right - Cisco routinely talks to him via the comms while he's running, which would be impossible if time had slowed down. Unless the time-slows-down effect is extremely localized, explaining why people immediately around Barry are moving too slow to "talk" but Cisco, at a distance, isn't...

Yeah, this whole focusing on trivial details or abstract questions isn't working to effectively distract him from the overarching point at issue here.

He ran backwards in time.

He ran backwards in time!

He ran.

Backwards.

In _time_.

Nope, no matter how many times Barry says that, it doesn’t get any less weird.

That shouldn't even be possible! Barry's a human being, not some bizarre singularity-black-hole in the making - unless that's what lies at the far end of his speed capacity –

Barry groans and puts his head in his hands.

He wants to talk to Iris about this, but he can't, because he's been lying to her so long about being the Flash that he doesn't know how he'd raise it even if Joe lifted his prohibition against telling her.

He wants to talk to Len, cool-headed, practical, sci-fi nerd Len, about this, but he can't, he can't just reveal himself now - and what if Len thinks that Barry's been deceiving him, too? He kinda has been, and they may be new to each other but Barry already knows that Len has deep-seated issues with deception and betrayal. So that's out, too.

And while Cisco and Caitlin are technically available, Barry desperately wants to talk to someone, _anyone_ , that isn't part of what Cisco's been calling Team Flash, because he has the sinking feeling that they (or at least Dr. Wells) kinda-sorta-maybe theorized that this was going to happen.

The time travel stuff, that is.

Dr. Wells hadn't even been all that surprised about it! A total reworking of how humanity understands physics and the nature of time, but nope, Dr. Wells, a renowned physicist, doesn't seem to care about the scientific implications. If anything, he'd just been pissed off that Barry changed what happened - apparently he "should've been more careful with changing history" which, uh, seriously? Barry literally saved the whole city? That seems like a worthwhile change to him, whatever the personal costs that might come about as a result.

Also, seriously, he just _broke physics_ , how is that not the priority issue here?!

It'd been weird. Not to mention how Dr. Wells' lack of surprise, combined with the vaguely pleased-anticipatory look Dr. Wells'd had when Barry first mentioned his time travel? _Really_ making Barry feel kind of manipulated here. Or like a science experiment. Or like one of those psychology experiments where you don't tell the subject what the goal is in advance because that could affect the results...

Either way, he's feeling used. 

All that emphasis on training speed - was it really to help Barry catch up to the Reverse Flash, as Cisco's started calling him, or was it to see if Barry could break the time barrier?

And if it was, why hadn't Wells just _told_ him that was the goal?

Maybe Barry doesn't _want_ to have the responsibility of fixing the timeline as well as the city, okay? He was a huge Harry Potter fan growing up - he's gotten into all the debates about what the wizarding world should and shouldn't have done with the Time-Turner technology/magic they apparently possessed for no reason other than to let an over-achieving student take extra classes, and damnit, he doesn't want to be book 3 Hermione! He doesn't want to have to be constantly thinking about what events over the previous day or whatever might be worth going back to fix! Barry's already doing two full-time jobs; time travel would just make the responsibility to be “always on” even worse! He wants to live a normal life sometime!

Cisco and Caitlin aren't any help, either with his complicated feelings about Dr. Wells or about the time travel thing. Cisco thinks time travel is cool, but in, like, a non-personal way, theorizing that Barry might go all Back To The Future on them and accidentally erase someone from existence which, thanks Cisco. Like Barry needs any _more_ pressure here.

God, Barry loves the guy, don't get him wrong, but sometimes Cisco is too focused on whether something is "awesome" and not enough about the actual impact of that something. Prime example: Captain Cold's cold gun, which remains an outstanding threat.

Caitlin, too; he would've thought that she'd be more sympathetic, but she'd immediately started thinking of major historical events he could change for the better - mostly the Particle Accelerator explosion, which killed her fiancé and ruined her career. Which, again, wow, pressure much? Barry can't blame her for her reaction but then she and Cisco'd gotten into an argument about paradox and neither of them were really noticing Barry's freak-out so he just said he had to go back to work and came here.

And even putting aside the whole time travel business, he really can't talk about his disappointment in Dr. Wells with them of all people, because neither Cisco nor Caitlin seem to understand that it's not actually normal for a boss to run experiments on his staff without their consent. Apparently that's "just how Dr. Wells is" and "well, you know, he is a genius" - which is _not okay_! Forgiving someone for being a dick because they're a genius is, like, sign number one of a toxic working environment, and Barry legitimately doesn't know how to convey that to them. 

It's like they've never had a union rep bring a lawyer to ramble at them for an hour about their rights as employees. Though now that Barry thinks of it, STAR Labs was probably never unionized, so that explains that, anyway...

Besides, even if he _could_ think of a way to explain to them that he's really upset with Dr. Wells right now, he's not actually sure if there's even a point in trying to do so. They stayed with Dr. Wells after the Particle Accelerator explosion; Barry's not sure there's anything the man could do that would break their loyalty to him.

Which is by itself kind of weird? That's a lot of loyalty to have to a single guy in relation to, well, a job. Even Hartley had been weirdly obsessed with Wells as a person, rather than just as a bad boss. Barry can sympathize with the idea of Wells being a father figure, he totally gets that, but...it's a bit weird. 

Weird or not, though, it's pretty depressing. Barry's never really thought about there being a difference in their goals, him and Dr. Wells, and it's kinda depressing to realize that if there is a difference, Cisco and Caitlin - probably his closest friends right now - would fall on Dr. Wells' side. 

Man, he wishes he could talk about all this to Iris. Or Len. 

(Not Joe. Joe would just immediately start encouraging Barry to use his time travel powers to stop routine crime, like murders and robberies, before they ever happened, and wouldn't understand at all why Barry's reluctant to take on that sort of responsibility. He hasn't even read Harry Potter! Or, like, Minority Report!)

No, what Barry needs is someone who's his friend, not Dr. Wells' friend, someone who's nerdy enough to get it, honorable enough to keep the whole thing a secret, and scientific enough to help him think through all the potential consequences here –

Holy crap, he's an idiot.

No: he's a _genius_.

The answer that would simultaneously solve _both_ of his current problems just hit him.

First problem: the suddenly-too-constricting circle of people who know about him being the Flash, thus limiting who he can talk to about this time travel/Dr. Wells development. 

Second problem: the fact that he's run into a total wall on the whole disappearances thing.

Answer: He can tell his CSI friends - Gila, Terri, and Andre - about the issue!

He can't believe he didn't think of this before. They're his friends, after all, even if he kinda-maybe-sorta has been neglecting them recently in favor of Cisco and Caitlin. No one's prohibited him from mentioning the Flash thing to them (unlike Iris), and as CSIs, they're familiar with keeping things totally confidential, which he needs them to do with his identity as the Flash.

It's perfect.

After all, they're all total nerds, so they'll be able to provide an objective (semi-objective, anyway) perspective into what's going on with Dr. Wells!

Plus, they might be able to help him make progress on finding the Reverse Flash - he still thinks Chemical X is speedster residue, but he hasn't been able to confirm that because he doesn't have the tools necessary to do that in his on-site lab. But his friends do, what with all those fancy new toys they're always telling him to come play with. 

They also have access to all the same case files as he does, so if he crosses off all the ones he knows _aren't_ related to the Reverse Flash, they might be able to see a pattern in the ones that are remaining. He's been trying, but it feels like every time he's on the verge of some sort of breakthrough, something Flash-related comes up.

Seriously, this Flash thing is really starting to take over his life. He hadn't had much of a life before, so he hadn't noticed it all that much, but now that he has an engaging project at work he wants to do in his free time, he's starting to realize that he doesn't actually _have_ any free time anymore.

Or, at least, the fact that he's given Team Flash at STAR Labs the idea that he'd give every minute of his free time to them, and if he doesn't, Dr. Wells gets annoyed, and when _that_ happens, Cisco and Caitlin call-slash-text him pleas to come sooner.

Yes, Barry could say no, and he's trying to do it more often, but he's kind of a doormat sometimes. He's aware of that.

Though the way Dr. Wells mentions his mom every time Barry skips out on training is really starting to piss Barry off...

He's getting distracted. The point here is that his idea - telling his friends - is a great idea, and he should do it.

(A little voice in his head suggests that there might be some downsides to the idea if he thinks about it a little longer, but he's really desperate to talk to someone, so he's just going to ignore that little voice. He's sure it'll be fine.)

Decision made, Barry jumps up.

He promptly knocks his head against one of the shelves and has to spend a few Flash-speed seconds catching all the evidence samples before they crash onto the ground, but when they're all back in order, he heads out right away.

The CSI building (technically, the off-site forensic science analysis division of the CCPD, but no one calls it that) is just as he remembers it: a big squat office building painted a soul-sucking taupe color, unlovely and boring and everything Barry's job is not.

Barry smiles at it fondly.

They throw the best holiday parties here. And birthday parties. And weekend parties, any time they have to work Sundays...yeah. This place is totally awesome. 

Okay, maybe the parties aren't the most exciting by anyone else's standards - Barry's well aware that D&D marathon sessions, WoW LAN parties, and high-stakes science trivia drinking contests aren't everyone's speed, but they definitely are his.

It's a good place.

Barry considers just running upstairs, but that seems rude, so he buzzes in through the front desk like a proper visitor would. The door guy - a friendly if somewhat nebbish guy named Gary who's studying frantically for grad school just about every second he can, something that doesn't seem to have changed in the entire time Barry's known him - looks up from his textbook and exclaims, "Barry! Buddy! It's so good to see you!"

Barry grins. "Hey, Gary. How's it hanging? How's John?"

Gary flushes pink in delight. "I can't believe you remember my boyfriend's name. You only met him once!"

"Between the British accent, trenchcoat, and tendency to flirt with everything up to and including inanimate objects after a few drinks, John was _very_ memorable," Barry says dryly. "You're still together?"

"Yeah, we're good," Gary says. "He's been a bit busy with this thing at work - something called Project Rising Darkness, I don't know, I think his co-worker Manny thought it up, he's kinda emo - but he's been helping me apply to work with the FBI in my spare time now that I'm on the verge of graduating."

"At last! That's really great, Gary; I hope you make it," Barry says warmly. Something occurs to him. "Uh, actually, do you know about the new Internal Affairs guy in the CCPD?"

"No; what about him?"

"I hear he used to do undercover work in a joint CCPD-FBI group," Barry says. "Maybe he could recommend you?"

"You think so?" Gary asks, brightening. "That would be amazing! I'll reach out to him."

"You do that," Barry says, amused. He's pretty sure Gary's unique combination of overwhelming optimism and extreme eagerness to please could evoke sympathy from anyone, whether they’re an undead zombie or a ninja assassin or both; a mere supervillain like Captain Cold doesn't stand a chance. Besides, it could actually help Gary's career. "I'm here to talk to Gila, Terri, and Andre - are they still in the old room?"

"Your old crew, of course! I should have guessed," Gary says, beaming. "No, they're on the new floor - let me give you directions."

Good thing Barry asked.

See, there's some benefit to going slow sometimes.

(Barry really wishes he could think of a good way to tell Len about being the Flash - he'd get such a kick out of all the slow/fast puns Barry's made so far.)

When Barry gets up to the new floor, though, he slows down for a completely different reason.

"What the _hell_...?"

"Barry!" Gila exclaims, abruptly appearing out the door. That part's not a surprise; Gila was the person who inspired Barry's belief that chubby five-foot-two women with hair a color of red not found in nature are capable of a sort of magic sudden appearance thing that the Flash can only envy. "You finally came to visit!"

Barry just gestures mutely.

She grins. "So what you're saying is that you like the new lab."

"You said you got new machines!" Barry yowls. "You didn't say they redid _everything_ with state-of-the-art tech!"

Andre - Gila's opposite in every respect, being tall, skinny, and dark-skinned - strolls out of the door, laughing. "They felt _very_ bad," he says, grinning. "You know, you look remarkably well for someone who was in a coma for nine months."

"I know," Barry says, grinning back. "But seriously! Look at this! This is _amazing_!"

"You want a tour?" Terri asks, joining the rest of them.

"Do I ever!"

The tour takes them all past the end of official working hours, but no one minds; they're all used to working odd hours.

By the end of the tour, Barry's fallen in love. Deeply, irrevocably in love - with one of the new spectroanalysis machines, which he's named Julie.

"You know you can't take that back to the city with you," Andre says, sniggering.

"You can't separate me and Julie! We're meant to be!" Barry exclaims, hugging the machine.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, you big baby. You're the one who volunteered to be the on-site tech," Gila laughs. "You get the fresh crime scenes, we get the cool tech – deal with it!"

Barry mock-grumbles at her.

"Now, it's getting late," Terri says briskly. "Why don't you tell us why you're really here?"

Barry blinks.

"We're your friends, B," Andre says, not without fondness. "We know you and love you for the absent-minded super-focused asshole you are. No way you came all the way out here just to say hi and go on a tour our admittedly kickass new facility; if you wanted to do that, you would've done much earlier on."

"So what's the issue and how can we help?" Gila asks.

"Uh," Barry says. 

He's never really had to tell someone. Maybe Felicity, but that was because she already knew about Oliver and he could just, you know, communicate in lots of "you know..? You know..."s.

Well, at least he can consider this good practice for telling someone like Len or Iris.

"Okay," he says. "I have - no, wait. Can you guys first promise to keep this, like, super confidential? The most confidential. It's really important. I might not be able to tell you everything, but I want to tell you some of it and, well, yeah. You guys promise?"

They all impatiently agree.

"Okay," Barry says again. Wow, this is harder to get out than he thought. Maybe it'd be easier with an oblique approach? "Uh - I have a lead on Chemical X."

"You do?!" Gila exclaims.

"Well, a hunch," he corrects. "Let's take a step back: the Particle Accelerator explosion released a lot of dark matter -"

"And don't we know it," Terri grumbles.

"- and it's been affecting people."

"How?" Andre asks.

"They've been developing strange abilities," Barry tells them. "All sorts. We've been calling them 'meta-humans'."

"You and the CCPD?"

"Uh," Barry says. "No. Me and the scientists over at STAR Labs."

"Wells," Terri growls. "Of course he'd know more than he let on."

"He's trying to help," Barry says firmly. "Please try to stay objective, Terri. Anyway: you know how you think the Flash is an urban legend?"

"Less so now, after all the reported sightings," Andre says wryly. "A good scientist admits when their hypothesis is wrong...You're saying the Flash is one of these meta-humans? That the dark matter somehow gave someone the ability to, what, run at incredible speeds?"

"Yes. And not just him; there's _another_ speedster out there, dressed in yellow instead of red and emitting red lightning instead of yellow. I think that speedster is behind the disappearances, and that Chemical X is the residue left behind when he runs."

"A human running at Mach speeds," Gila says thoughtfully. She's the chemical analysis expert of the three of them, compared to Barry's jack-of-all-trades (with an interest in weird stuff), Terri's forensic accounting, and Andre's fingerprint/DNA specialization. "That might do the trick, yeah. But what makes you think it's not the Flash? I've never even heard of this second speedster: Occam's Razor suggests one makes more sense than two."

Ouch. No wonder Captain Cold is suspicious, if even Barry's friends jump to that assumption.

...huh. Maybe the guy really _isn't_ a supervillain - just a very unorthodox cop worried that Barry's up to something.

Barry doesn't know exactly what to do with that thought, so he shelves it for later.

"No," he says. "I know it's not the Flash."

"Why?" Andre asks.

"Well..." 

Barry runs.

Just from one end of the lab to the other, but it's enough to make his point. 

"Holy crap!" Terri exclaims, amid similar exclamations. "Barry, what the hell?"

"See," he says, grinning. "Told you I knew it wasn't the Flash. Cool, isn't it?"

There's another five solid minutes of yelling about how freaking awesome super-speed is and potential scientific implications and possible applications before they finally settle down.

That, of course, is when Barry breaks out the time travel thing, and that gets all of them yelling _again_ , this time for ten minutes.

Barry enjoys the whole thing. Not just because they do, in fact, think that the whole Flash thing pretty damn awesome but also because some of their ideas about scientific applications of his usual Flash powers are pretty damn neat: learning about brain plasticity by studying the effect of learning at super-speed, the possibility of transferring his healing powers (even if only temporarily) via a blood or bone marrow transfusion, super-speed surgery or fire rescue or even just using it to test the laws of physics as they know them...

Honestly, this is more along the lines of what Barry was expecting when Dr. Wells had asked him to agree to help scientific progress by allowing himself to be studied: crazy brainstorming, hypothesizing, testing, record-keeping with an eye towards eventual publication...

Huh.

Why _haven't_ they done that at STAR Labs? How have they all managed to get so fully fixated on the question of speed, and specifically of _maximizing_ speed? Even before he'd found out about the Man in Yellow and how he needed to catch up to him, everything they'd done had been aimed at making him faster.

Sure, one of the joys of a new discovery is finding out its limits, but getting to a top speed isn't the _only_ limit they could be testing. 

Now that he thinks about it, Caitlin's wistful requests to study his biological reactions were always brushed off, as were Cisco's occasional daydreams about trying to replicate even a lower level of speed in his machines; at this point, they've stopped even asking - Caitlin focusing all her research on maximizing his metabolism to enable further speed, Cisco doing nothing but creating new suits that can go faster. No different experiments, no exploring different alternatives, barely any hypothesizing and no control groups at all...

That - isn't how science is supposed to work.

Barry has the distinct sinking feeling that something is even more wrong in STAR Labs than he'd originally thought, and that in his excitement over his new abilities and joy at having new friends, he may have overlooked it entirely.

Great.

He hasn't had a chance to raise the whole Wells issue with his CSI friends yet, but he's starting to think that he might need to raise that on a different visit. Possibly after he's had some time to think about it and figure out if he's just being unduly paranoid or if there really is something off there.

After all, Terri already dislikes Wells, thinking there was something intentional behind the Accelerator explosion; if Barry doesn't tread lightly here, they might not be willing to entertain the possibility that it's all a coincidence.

...a really big coincidence.

"Okay, okay, okay!" Terri eventually shouts, holding up their hands. "Hush. We can brainstorm ideas later. Barry, I assume the difficulty you're having is in both running and analyzing?"

"I definitely leave _a_ residue that appears similar on a surface glance," Barry confirms. "And it seems pretty similar, but I'm worried about there being bias affecting my ability to confirm if it's definitely Chemical X..."

"We have a lab room for testing," Gila says, taking charge. Chemical analysis is her specialty, even though she prefers to throw the weirder things over to Barry. "Come on."

The test, when done properly - Gila insists on several variations, plus a few "control" runs using Andre, which is so normal Barry feels like crying in relief - takes about an hour to finish on the new machines. 

Barry spends the whole hour telling the group stories about the metas he's defeated – unsurprisingly, they’re a lot less interested in how he defeated them than they are in just what abilities dark matter can produce, so he eventually gives up on trying to tell them the stories and starts just describing the meta powers and letting them brainstorm possible applications or explanations for them – and trying to decide on whether he should bring up the Wells thing or not.

Assuming there even _is_ a Wells thing beyond some crappy scientific method, bad management skills, and a few weird reactions. 

He still hasn't decided by the time the result comes out.

And the result -

"Yep, this is definitely Chemical X or something extremely similar," Gila reports. "The analysis matches on multiple vectors. Congrats, Barry, you have a residue; the only question now is if you're secretly a serial kidnapper."

"Hey!"

"Joking," Gila says, smiling crookedly. "You were _definitely_ in a coma for a few of these early ones. We came to visit a few times. You're all alibi'd out."

"Speaking of which," Terri says from where they and Andre have been pouring over the case files. "Can you come here and double-check some of these? I'm starting to see a pattern, but there are a few outliers."

Barry comes over, noticing that the files have been divided into three piles, one large and two smaller ones. "Yeah, I think -"

"No, no, there's just a few in particular," Terri says. "And I want you to think carefully if there's any chance they _could_ be Flash-adjacent, any chance at all."

Barry nods, frowning. "You think you have something?"

"Well, maybe. I don’t know why the disappearances related to the Flash would be different, they’re still disappearances, but ignoring that, if we try to exclude them, then I think I see two patterns instead of one," Terri says. "It's not unusual in forensic accounting - people are rarely corrupt in only one way, if that makes sense? They usually have a couple of different plots happening at the same time, and that can confuse the results if you look for only one explanation. But these outliers...well, they might just be outliers. But based on the stories you've been telling us, these actually feel like they might be Flash-related, and therefore can be excluded, which would support my theory."

"What do you mean?"

“Well, take this one, Mason Bridges – he was investigating the Flash, right? And then there’s this one, Simon Stagg.”

“What about him?”

“Didn't you say you fought him - or, uh, around him, anyway - at Stagg Industries?”

Barry blinks. He hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, good point,” he says. “Danton Black – he’s the one who basically committed suicide, it was awful – was trying to get back at Stagg Industries because they stole his work on cellular regeneration and took credit for it.”

“So Stagg witnessed a fight between a meta and the Flash right before he disappeared?”

“Uh,” Barry says. “Yes?”

“So we can say those are tangentially Flash related, too,” Terri says briskly, putting the two files into one of the smaller piles. “And this Farooq guy you mentioned, who used lightning to get rid of your powers and then got driven off –”

“I’m, like, 90% sure he died, but I’m honestly not sure.”

“No body, though,” Terri says. “I’m counting it as a disappearance. Plus you take the fact that that Professor Stein guy’s last known whereabouts were when he was heading to STAR Labs –”

“That was way before my time, though,” Barry objects. “He disappeared before the Accelerator even blew!”

“Good point. I’ll put him in the STAR Labs pile.”

Barry’s eyebrows go up. “STAR Labs pile?”

“As far as I can tell,” Terri says, “a handful of these disappearances can only be connected by the fact that they’re related to STAR Labs, particularly prior to the explosion. Could just be coincidence, but we're dealing with disappearances including the man in charge of building permits, a local paparazzo who went there to look for a scoop and never came back, this professor going there right before the explosion, that sort of thing, and since I'm looking for any pattern at all right now, I'm going to take it. But here's the interesting thing: if we put those aside, and put aside the specifically Flash-related ones as well, the rest of these – ” And here they gestured at the large pile. “– have a significantly more sinister connection.”

“Sinister?” Gila echoes.

Terri makes a face. “I’m pretty sure they’re Family hits.”

“They’re _what_?! No way!”

“Unfortunately so,” Terri says. “It’s pretty subtle – a lot of these people are only tangentially related to Family stuff, accountants or political figures or hospital staff or county clerks – but I’ve been doing a lot of work for the organized crime division recently, following the money trails, and I recognize some of these names.”

Barry sits down hard, all thoughts of Wells abruptly wiped from his mind. “The Man in Yellow is working as a Family assassin?”

“Possibly,” Terri says, reaching out to tap what they’d dubbed the ‘STAR Labs’ pile thoughtfully. “Not sure how that relates to these one ones if that's the case...Though if they are a Family assassin, the question arises: why? And why aren’t they doing _more_ of them?”

“Assassination at super-speed,” Gila marvels. “They could kill the mayor in the middle of city square and no one could stop them.”

They all look at her.

“It wasn’t a _suggestion_! I was just _saying_.”

“The Families aren’t going to act that publicly,” Andre says, shaking his head. “Not in a million years; that’d bring the Feds down on their heads.”

“Not to mention inciting the whole city to riot,” Terri says. “Central’s very ‘oh, well, the Families, what can you do’ most of the time, but public interference on that scale? No way. No one would tolerate it. The only reason they’re tolerated as much as they are _now_ is because most people feel comfortable with the way they’re cordoned off: their operations are mostly focused on the slums, their protection rackets don’t extend to the wealthiest neighborhoods, and so what if they bribe a few councilmen? We all know who they are, so it's almost like having a comforting safety valve.”

“Same with the police,” Barry says, making a face. “We all know which guys are in Family pockets are, so we all shrug it off, saying it’s better to know who it is than not to know.”

“I wasn’t saying they’d do it,” Gila protests. “Just that they _could_ , you know, and what are people going to say? A streak of light did it? How would they even connect that to the Families? If they don’t know there are two speedsters, they’d probably just assume it was the Flash!”

Uh.

Barry hadn’t thought of that. 

“Everyone would just _assume_ it was the Families, even if they also thought it was the Flash,” Andre points out. “Everyone always blames crime in Central on the Families, and they’re usually right, too.”

Right. 

Whew. 

Barry doesn't want to deal with the thought of being framed at super-speed. 

“I have a better question, though,” Andre continues. “If these are the Families, why are there so _many_? Like Terri said, the Families exist in a pretty tight balance in Central: enough influence to rule the streets, not enough to bother the movers and shakers. This many hits, in such a short amount of time? That’s not balanced. They must be planning something big.”

“The Families have been fading in power recently,” Terri offers. “Power-wise. The Feds have been taking huge bites out of them for the last decade and a half, ambushing major deals, busting huge deposits, blocking key intake lines…”

Barry snaps his fingers. “Captain Cold!”

“…what?”

“No, sorry, the new Internal Affairs guy, Captain Snart,” Barry says. “Captain Singh told me that he used to be undercover, that his cover got blown, and that the Families are still trying to kill him. He’s been helping bring them down!”

“And now he’s changed tracks to start taking down corrupt Family-bribed cops?” Gila asks, sounding impressed. “I mean, good for him; that's real dedication and work ethic there, at least for the three weeks he’s probably got left to live until the Families murder him. Especially with these disappearances.”

“Holy crap,” Barry says.

“What?”

“No, it just occurred to me,” Barry says. “All these disappearances – the Anti-Flash Task Force, which Captain Snart is involved with, is looking into these disappearances. Like you said, if you don’t know there’s two speedsters, you think it’s the Flash! That’s _why_ he’s looking into the Flash!”

“Reasonable enough,” Terri says.

Barry shakes his head. He’s been so obsessed with trying to figure out Captain Cold’s evil plan – because, like, the guy has a mask, a superpowered cold gun, _cold puns_ , supervillain is clearly the obvious conclusion here – that even though the thought had occurred to him once or twice, he’d never really believed in the possibility that maybe the guy is actually, well, doing his job.

Except – it seems like that’s probably what’s going on.

So weird.

“I’m going to need to think about this,” Barry says. 

“Make sense,” Gila says. “Now what, though? I assume you don’t want to out yourself as the Flash.”

“Definitely not.”

“I’ll write up a draft report about how these particular disappearances appear linked to the Families,” Terri offers. “That’ll get everyone on the right track, I think, without needing to get into the other ones being Flash-related. But Gila will eventually need to submit something on the residue…”

“I can say it might be related to a speedster,” Gila says. “But that might lead him to suspect the Flash more…”

“No, you should still do that, even if it makes him suspicious,” Barry says. “Stopping this guy is the top priority, above everything else. If I have to stop being the Flash for a while or talk to Captain Snart about what I’m doing, I’ll do that. I’ll figure something out.”

“Good luck!”

Barry heads back to the office, torn between being absolutely elated at the progress they’re making and kind of horrified at what they’ve discovered. Somehow, even though he’d signed up to be a superhero, he hadn’t really thought about going up against the Families – the closest he’d come was fighting Nimbus, and that’d been one of the toughest fights he’d had yet –

There’s someone in his office.

It’s pretty late, getting close to nine p.m.; the building should be deserted. The CSI lab, which is basically Barry’s private area, should _definitely_ be deserted; there shouldn’t be someone walking around with only one dim phone light to guide them. 

What the hell’s going on?

Barry reaches inside the room and flips on all the lights at once.

“Jesus fuck!” the intruder swears, clutching at his eyes to shield himself from the glare.

The intruder –

“Detective Lloyd?” Barry asks, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for some of case files and evidence someone checked out,” Lloyd says, sounding annoyed. “What’re _you_ doing here? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“I had to duck out for an appointment,” Barry lies. “I came back to finish up some projects. You know, if you think the evidence is up here, then the only person who could’ve checked them out is me – which cases are you looking for? I might be able to help you find it.”

Lloyd rattles off some case numbers.

Those are a few of the disappearance cases, some of the ones they’d determined were probably Family hits.

“Oh, yeah, I know where those are,” Barry says, heading towards the evidence cabinet, as he's mentally dubbed it. “Gimme a second. How long do you need them? I still have a few tests I'd like to run..."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Allen," Lloyd says. 

Barry pauses in the middle of pulling out the evidence bags. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you know how it is. What with the Commissioner running for office and all, that means Deputy Commissioner Gillick's going to be moving up soon, and he doesn't like too much spending," Lloyd says, reaching out and plucking the bags out of Barry's hands. "Especially on low-priority cases like this."

"I know they're not at the top of the queue," Barry says, a little stung. "But they're still important. In fact -"

He's about to tell Lloyd about the Family connection, but Lloyd cuts him off. 

"They're low-priority, Allen," he says. "Trust me. No one wants to be wasting time looking into these. Just relax, will you? Take another - heh - day off. We've got a pretty good handle on these cases." He waves the bag. "And we're pretty sure there's nothing all that serious to them."

"But -"

"That's final, Allen," Lloyd says. "Listen, take a tip from a friend, yeah? You want people to like you, you do your job, you do it well, and you don't step on people's toes in the process. It's not like these cases are going down the memory chute or something; we're just bumping them down so they don't interfere with more important stuff. You hear me?"

"I hear you," Barry says, still frowning. 

Lloyd slaps him on the back, says, "I knew you weren't as uptight as they say," and heads out.

Barry would normally spend the next hour stressing out about who 'they' are and the fact that he's totally not uptight but do people think he is, but he's too busy being utterly appalled.

Why would Lloyd be warning Barry off a Family-related case? He's not one of the cops in the Family pocket, not even slightly; there's never been a hint of scandal there.

Honestly, if Barry hadn't known it was a Family case, he probably wouldn't have even thought it was all that weird. Lloyd's heavy-handed suggestion to butt out is practically normal for cops, who are notoriously protective of their cases, and even the weird hour he came by isn't all that unusual for a cop. 

It's not that Barry's worried or anything, of course: once Terri and the others submit their report, the cases will be upgraded once more, no matter what Lloyd says.

But - it is a Family case. And Lloyd tried to squelch it.

Why would he do that, if it wasn't on the orders of one of the Families? Was it on someone else's orders? If so, who, and why is Lloyd listening to them?

What's going on here?


	13. 13

"You'll never believe what I found!" Iris declares, rolling into Len's office like she owns a part of it.

Danvers looks up from her chair next to Len's desk - he'd called her in for a chat they had yet to get to - with a smile. "What?"

"Well, not _me_ exactly - I've been pursuing some other lines of inquiry - but a friend of mine -"

"Is this about the upcoming CSI report on how they believe some of the disappearances might be related to Family targets?" Len inquires before she can get to it, because he's an asshole.

Iris deflates. "You've already heard."

"One of the CSIs called and gave me the short version," Len says, a touch wryly. "Someone mentioned my background to them and they were concerned I wouldn't live too long with a possible super-speed assassin on the loose."

Iris' jaw goes stiff. "Did they mention the part about there being good reason to believe there are two speedsters?"

Based on convincing information provided by one Barry Allen, yes, they'd mentioned it, albeit without specifying exactly what that information was.

Len really wishes he could just talk to Barry - to _Allen_ , damnit, he's still technically a suspect - about this whole Flash thing. It would make everything a lot less complicated.

Unfortunately...

"They did," he acknowledges. "The individual in question also passed along some _very_ interesting facts about how some of the disappearances might be related to the creation of, and evading the ultimate consequences of, the Particle Accelerator at STAR Labs."

STAR Labs, which Barry Allen is currently very close with.

(All those old paranoias coming back up: why did Barry fake a coma for nine months? What was he doing during those nine months? The story about his mom dying checks out, at least, so the investigation motive is still possible - but what is happening at STAR Labs, and why? What's their motive? Why is Allen trying to do this on his own? _What's going on_?)

Iris blinks owlishly at Len. "So?"

" _Two_ speedsters, both intimately tied to and protecting STAR Labs?" Len asks, arching his eyebrows at her. "Doesn't exactly sound like a rivalry to me. Sounds like -"

"A stable," Danvers says.

Len blinks at her.

"You know," Danvers says. "Like in wrestling? A group of allies working together towards the same goal, usually composed of heels - er, bad guys, that is - and...neither of you know what I'm talking about, right."

"Hockey was always more my sport," Len says a bit blankly. He had no idea that Danvers liked wrestling; that opens up a whole new vista of terrible jokes and even more terrible novelty gifts. "I was never much for acrobatic punch-outs; if people are going to be hitting each other, I'd prefer it be in favor of getting a puck into a net."

"Plus there's all the ice-related puns you can make," Iris adds.

She's gotten to know him well already, Len sees.

Danvers, the traitor, raises a hand for a high-five at that, which Iris gives her. 

"The way I see it right now-" Len says, pointedly ignoring his childish and immature subordinates, and also his own hypocrisy. "- is this: STAR Labs is setting itself up as the go-to shop for weird things, either for scientific purposes or the more usual money-and-power motives, and it's deploying one, maybe two speedsters to protect itself. Now, if there even _are_ two, which I ain't conceding without evidence, the speedsters might still be working together -"

"But there have to be two! The Flash wouldn't be involved in Family -"

"You don't actually know that, beyond one or two personal interactions with the guy," Len points out. "No matter how good you think you are at reading people, that’s not enough; serial killers can be quite pleasant, I’ll have you know. As for whether there are two speedsters or not, right now the only evidence I've gotten that there are two speedsters are unconfirmed assertions -" 

By Barry - by _Allen_ , who, to be fair, is probably a good source about STAR Labs business...assuming that he’s telling the truth about it. 

"- and some stuff about one wearing red while the other wears yellow. And even if different colored clothing - which people can and usually do change pretty often, let me remind you - was a valid reason to differentiate between them, we can't actually prove any of this because they run too fast to be seen."

"Ouch," Iris says. "I hate your logic. Don't you ever have faith in people?"

"No," Len says. "As demonstrated by the fact that I'm still alive. Go on, ask me about the background check I did on you."

"You did a..?"

"Don't ask," Danvers says with a sigh. "Yes, he did one, yes, it was extensive, and also high school girls in Central City have a memory that goes on forever so you really, really don’t want to ask for details. Next subject?"

"Please," Iris says, looking pained. 

"Getting back to the point," Len says, "we don't know if the speedsters are working together or if this is a right-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-left-is-doing sorta scenario, so there's a chance - a _chance_ \- that your buddy the Flash is still mostly in the clear -"

After all, it could have been this mysterious other speedster that killed Allen's mom. The Flash appeared pretty young the two times Len met him, and he _did_ save all those people on that train...

Still: verify first, trust second. That's been Len's motto for a long time for very good reasons.

"But you don't think so?" Iris asks, crossing her arms.

"I don't know what to think," Len confesses. "Someone is clearly up to something here, something big, and I've got no clue what the fuck it is. The Accelerator gets built, the Accelerator blows, possibly on purpose - why? We don't know. Speedsters one or two are disappearing people for the Families at a rate not seen in years without any apparent discrimination between which Families' interest they're serving - why? We don't know. The Flash claims that he's trying to save the city - from what? Who? Why isn't he working with the police? We just don't know."

He shakes his head. He hate mysteries, he really does. 

"I get it," Iris says. " _Cui bono_ , right?"

"Who benefits?" Danvers agrees. "As far as I can tell - no one. Maybe the Families, from the hits, but from the Accelerator? No one."

"Not quite true," Len says. "STAR Labs benefits."

"Their reputation was ruined by the Accelerator blast," Iris protests.

"Reputation, yes," Len says. "But that's about it. No major lawsuits - a quickie settlement paid 'em off, with the most litigious hold-outs that wanted to go to trial disappearing - possibly literally, has anyone checked into that? - and no jail time for Wells, and now he has a deserted building in a prime location that suddenly has speedster assassins on offer?"

"That's a pretty elaborate sham, though," Iris objects.

"Maybe turning mercenary was plan B, who knows?" Len says. "We won't, not until we start arresting people and getting answers outta them. Now, here's the facts: I'm willing, _tentatively_ , to believe in the possibility that the Flash is largely innocent of this Families business, maybe because he's getting manipulated or something, but no matter what, he's _definitely_ involved with STAR Labs, and STAR Labs seems like it's the center of everything."

Iris nods. "We need to investigate Wells, and any possible connection he has with the Families," she says. "Eddie and I can do that."

"Good," Len says. "Be careful. We don't want you to get disappeared."

"I'm not on any Family hit list -"

"You don't need to be," Len says harshly. "You make sure you have company and protection at all time, you get me? _Especially_ if these disappearances are happening at super-speed – we don’t have a way to stop them. The only way we can even try to slow something like that down is making sure there are people around you to see the disappearance happen, since thus far whoever is doing them seems to want to avoid that."

Iris frowns. "What's with the sudden concern?"

"We went back to check on Mardon," Danvers says quietly. "Since nothing happened at the dockyard and it was getting late in the week. He was gone."

"Gone?"

"His house was a mess," Len says. "Not like it was tossed for stuff; more like something went through it super-fast, sending all the lightweight objects fluttering into the air. A speedster, causing a disappearance – and if there are two, we don’t know which one did the job. Now, if someone figures out that we went and talked to the guy, and if the goal was to silence him for whatever reason, we’re next on the list. They'd have no reason to assume we didn't learn whatever it was they took him to hide."

"I'll be careful," Iris promises, looking disturbed. "I'll make sure Wally is, too - he's staying with Eddie and me for now, since he was sleeping out of his car while his mom was in the hospital."

“Have you told...?”

“No, not yet,” Iris says, with a wince. “I don’t even know what to say about it! It’s just – he just – argh! Do you know that we’re actually full siblings? Wally and me?”

“What?” Danvers asks, as blankly surprised as Len feels. “How is that possible? He said his mom is in the hospital, and I thought you said –”

“Yes, I said my mom died,” Iris says. “Because that’s what I was _told_.”

...ouch.

“I’ve thought she was dead since I was five!”

Double ouch.

And here Len’d assumed something simple and straightforward like some sort of affair or something.

“So on Eddie’s advice I’m just kinda not talking to Dad right now,” Iris says. “At least until I’ve figured out a way to, uh…”

“Not get arrested for patricide?” Len suggests. “Or, at minimum, assault, battery, and possibly grievous bodily harm when you kick his balls into his lungs?”

“...yeah. Basically.”

“Well, at least you have your investigation to devote your time and feelings to,” Danvers says brightly. “Work is good for getting out rage. Or punching things! That also works.”

“We should go to kickboxing class together sometime,” Iris tells her. 

"Nah, I do it, uh, freestyle, but thanks for offering!"

Len doesn't want to know what Danvers has been punching. He really doesn't.

Okay, he does, but he's not going to _ask_ or anything.

He's opening his mouth to ask, because he is weak, when his phone buzzes.

Len blinks.

Danvers blinks.

"...aren't you going to get that?" Iris asks.

"The boss doesn't get calls," Danvers says. "Texts, sometimes, but calls...? It’s mostly just me."

Len checks the number. "It's not the hospital."

Danvers' shoulders slump.

Len agrees entirely. For a moment, he'd hoped – _maybe_ – but no.

Still no news. 

"Probably just one of my contacts deciding they’re too good for texting," he says, and hobbles out the door - he's trying out the leg braces again - to answer it. And possibly rip whoever it is a new one, because Len hates getting calls.

"Snart," the voice on the other side of the line says.

Len frowns, recognizing the voice, however unexpected. "D'Angelo? What do you want? I thought you'd left town."

"I did, and I’m still not back," d'Angelo says. "But there's this job I thought you might be interested in hearing about."

"A job? You know I'm not in the biz anymore. I don't do jobs."

"This job's different - it involves the Flash. I figured since you took an interest last time..."

Len's eyebrows go up. "Okay," he says. "I'm listening."

A few minutes later, he walks back into his office. "Iris," he says. "Two questions: one, do you really believe the Flash is innocent? And -"

"Yes, of course!"

"Let me finish. Two: how do you feel about getting that hazard pay?"

Iris, not being an idiot, immediately looks highly suspicious. "Before I answer that one, exactly how are those two questions related?"

"I just got intel about a trap some guys are planning for the Flash," Len says. "They want to get him caught on camera to 'out' him as a real life superhero -"

"Why?" Danvers asks.

"Merchandising."

" _Merchandising?_ "

Len shrugs. "He doesn't seem like the type that'd sue over trademark infringement. They've got plans for a line of action figures, shirts, mugs, the works."

"What," Danvers says dubiously, "is _wrong_ with some people?"

"I know, right? That's Central City corporate shills for you - it's just dumb enough to be believable. Anyway, they've hired some thugs to do the dirty work and their original plan for getting the Flash's attention was to just go and bomb STAR Labs -"

"And this is a problem?" Iris asks.

"Given that we're _investigating_ STAR Labs? Yeah, it is," Len says. "We don't want the whole operation to go underground and make us lose all our best leads. So I offered 'em a better deal."

"And the better deal is, what, using the fact that I’m the Flash's favorite journalist to lure him in?" Iris asks skeptically.

Len looks steadily at her.

"Wait, _really_?" Iris looks disturbingly flattered, whether it's because people agree the Flash is likely to come rescue her or because Len's agreeing to take her into the field. "Okay, that's awesome."

"You think _that's_ awesome, just wait; you haven't heard the rest of the plan yet," Len says. "We're going to challenge the Flash to a public showdown, using Iris as the bait to appeal to his heroic nature -"

"Why are we agreeing to this at all?" Danvers asks. "Shouldn't we just continue investigating him? Even if the Flash shows up, we won't be able to catch him."

"The guy thinks I’m a supervillain, right? I'm going to be 'kidnapping' Iris," Len says. "Once she's 'rescued', she can grab him and hold him in place until I show up to ask him some questions and get to the bottom of his motivations once and for all. Moreover, it'll strengthen our hand considerably with the force for the Flash - the guy we're supposedly tracking - to be recognized as more than an urban legend; we've got plenty of circumstantial evidence, but nothing quite works as well as live footage."

"And you think it'll be fun," Danvers concludes.

"It's going to be _so much fun_ ," Len agrees. 

"I'm in," Iris declares. "Eddie's going to flip his lid, but I'm in."

"He can man the police barricades for the section of Central we wall off for this showdown -"

"Why in the world would the police barricade off a part of Central to let people fight?" Danvers protests. "That makes no sense - if they thought there'd be collateral damage, wouldn't they just arrest the people involved?"

"A, as you pointed out, we can't actually arrest the Flash, we don't have the evidence for it yet," Len says. "B, it'll look good on camera, so the Commissioner will go for it."

Danvers groans. "Election year. Imminent primary. Right, I nearly forgot. Man, Central City, sometimes..."

"Are we going to arrest the corporate guys?" Iris asks.

Len shrugs. "We could get them on conspiracy to damage property, maybe, or for trying to start a fight, but for anything beyond that, our involvement would render it entrapment. I'll imply heavily that we're just taking pity on them this once and that they'd better never do anything that dumb again; it'll probably work."

"You really don't care about property damage, do you?" Iris asks, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing.

"Not my job. I'm Internal Affairs," Len sniffs. 

"And a thief," Danvers teases, then grows serious. "Boss, this is Flash stuff. You promised -"

"Fine, fine, I'll wear the mask," Len says. It worked surprisingly well to be a simple mystery man; he hasn't been attacked while out and about in that mask yet. "Happy?"

"A mask, Iris, and an army of policemen barricading off the street available to protect you?" Danvers says, pretending to think about it. "I _guess_ I'll have to accept it. Maybe a nice protective bubble while we’re at it?"

“Hah, hah.”

Danvers convinced, the rest of the set-up is easy enough: Len gets in contact with d'Angelo, who puts him in touch with the thugs' bosses, Len convinces them that a kidnapping of the Flash's favorite reporter would be a much more surefire way to draw out the Flash than a bombing - and Thawne's follow-up visit "investigating" a possible conspiracy to damage property with some hinting that the thugs were indiscrete seals the deal.

The thugs are fired, Len is hired, and Iris plays the damsel in distress in a short phone-filmed hostage video that took maybe fifteen takes to get done because Danvers wouldn't stop sniggering as she filmed it.

"I feel kind of bad setting the Flash up like this," Iris says as they head to the rendezvous point.

"Just imagine," Len says, "actually getting all of the answers we’ve been wanting, to your satisfaction and to mine, so we can identify whether he's a victim or a perpetrator -"

"Oh, shut up," she hisses, amused. "I'm not getting cold feet; I know it's for his own good that he finally gets a chance to prove himself to you -"

Iris is of the opinion that merely showing up to do the rescue would already be a good sign of the Flash's heroism; Len disagrees, since there's plenty of ways to be a hero with corrupt motives, but he must admit he's a bit hopeful.

"- and I know, being a journalist, that being 'exposed' as a hero trying to save a girl is only going to be good for his public reputation. So we're helping, not hurting, even if we _are_ tricking him. Also, has anyone ever told you that your voice is almost unrecognizable under that mask?"

"It's never really come up," Len says dryly. "Everyone I encounter while wearing it either already knows who I am, or I don't want them to."

"Aren't you worried at all that this will make people think you're a bad guy?" she asks.

"Given that this mask is basically only useful when I'm at risk from criminals? No, not really. This will help solidify the masked man's rep - and distance it from me, since I ain't never gone in for kidnapping, not even when I was a thief."

"Fair," Iris acknowledges. "And I'll tell the Flash what's going on the second I'm 'rescued' so that he can stop worrying about your motives...oooh, there he is!"

The Flash comes to a stop a few dozen feet away from them, his face blurred with vibrations. 

"Captain Cold," he says. He almost sounds - disappointed.

"Flash," Len says, then pauses, surprised.

Only cops call him ‘Captain Cold.’

The Flash is a _cop_?

Or, no – it’s possible, albeit just barely, that the Flash just heard the term being thrown around by some cops while snooping on police radio. Possible, but highly unlikely: even if the name got mentioned, putting it together with Len when he’s wearing a full-face mask without any assistance is doubtful. 

More likely, there’s a cop on the STAR Labs payroll that gave them the term.

A cop, in other words, that is willingly working with an extremely illegal vigilante. 

Damnit, Len _hates_ corrupt cops.

That annoyance is probably why he snidely says, “You just can’t resist shoving your nose into everything, can you?” instead of, well, anything more diplomatic. 

“ _I_ can’t – you literally put out a video challenging me to a fight!” the Flash protests. 

Len fires a warning blast at the Flash’s feet. “You want to fight? We can fight.”

“Is this part of the plan?” Iris hisses in Len’s ear. “Or are you just being a bitch for some reason?”

“No one calls me Captain Cold but the cops,” Len murmurs. 

“So what? So he used a stupid nickname; who cares about –” 

Len can see the second the meaning of that hits her.

“Oh crap,” she says.

Len bares his teeth under his mask. “Yeah,” he says, a little savagely. “Looks like this whole thing just came back under my jurisdiction.” 

He raises his voice. “Surrender now, Flash!”

“That’ll be a _cold_ day in hell,” the Flash shoots back. 

“It might happen _faster_ than you think!” Len replies without even thinking about it.

It’s – it’s not even conscious at this point. 

“Oh my god,” Iris groans. “Are you – are you two _quipping_?”

Punning! Not quipping!

Len's willing to consider compromising on 'bantering'. 

“Against you? I don’t think so,” the Flash replies cockily. “I think you just need to _chill_ out.”

“ _Slow_ your roll, Flash,” Len says. “Going up against me might not be your _brightest_ idea.”

“Why? You gonna put me _on ice_? Chances of that are _below zero_.”

It would be very inappropriate for Len to fall in love with a _second_ suspect, especially one that’s a law-breaking super-human vigilante. Very, very inappropriate, and also not fair to Barry.

But surprisingly tempting.

“You know what they say,” Len replies. “Live _fast_ , die young...”

“Please stop,” Iris says, covering her face. “Both of you. Anytime now. I’m dying of second-hand embarrassment here.”

The Flash looks at her with a frown. “You don’t seem all that distressed about being kidnapped,” he says, sounding suspicious.

“She’s assisting in police inquiries,” Len says, because she is and he’s working on not being so much of a liar anymore now that he’s gone straight, and fire his cold gun again in another warning shot.

He slightly misjudges the shot and hits a fire hydrant, causing it to burst and then immediately freeze over.

The Flash, who had immediately dodged to the side in order to evade a shot he’d assumed was aimed at him, ends up slipping on the frozen over part and landing flat on his ass.

There’s a moment of silence.

“Did that just happen?” Len asks, marveling. “Please tell me that just happened. And maybe that someone caught it on camera.”

“Freeze – er, stop where you are!” one of the cops hollers from the sidelines. “Both of you! You’re under arrest!”

Len can’t even blame them.

“Right,” the Flash says, and Len swears he can see a blush underneath the rapid vibration that's blurring out the visible parts of his face. “That’s it.”

He moves forward in a burst of light, aiming right at Len.

Len automatically fires, because twenty years undercover does not make a man comfortable with being attacked, but the Flash persists despite the slight freezer burn, yanking Iris out of Len’s arms and disappearing.

The police are on them (well, just him, now) a second later, pulling the gun out of Len’s hands and slapping on handcuffs, which is really unnecessary. He’d told Thawne to make his ‘capture’ realistic to preserve the masked supervillain identity in case of future need, yes, but there’s realistic and then there’s being shoved into the back of a police car with –

No Thawne.

Worse, Len recognizes the guy already in the driver’s seat.

Walter Lloyd.

Cichowksi’s old partner, back when they were both rookie beat cops together.

_Shit._

Len starts surreptitiously getting himself out of the handcuffs.

He’s about two-thirds of the way there when he hears the very distinct click of a gun being cocked in his direction.

He looks up.

Frank Peterson – aka, Cichowski’s _current_ partner, at least before he went to prison – is aiming a gun at Len’s face. 

“Don’t move a muscle,” he warns.

Len stops moving. 

It’s a good idea to do what people with guns in your face tell you to do, however distasteful – it might not help, in the end, but it means there’s a chance you might survive long enough to do something to get that gun out of your face. 

Keeping the gun aimed at such close range that even a barely functional alcoholic like Peterson wouldn’t be able to miss, Peterson reaches over and pulls Len’s hands forward, grunting when he sees that Len’s almost out of the cuffs.

“Goddamn thief,” he says, snapping the cuffs back on, and adding a few zip ties for good measure before pulling out some duct tape. “Once a thief, always a thief, huh, Snart?”

“Even for me, three zip ties and duct tape seem like a bit much,” Len says, holding his hands as wide as he can unobtrusively manage while they get wrapped up. Not that that’ll help him all that much. “I’m a thief, not fucking Houdini.”

“Yeah, well, we’re just making sure you’re not going to Houdini yourself out of this one,” Peterson sneers.

Hands well and truly fucked, Len opts to lean back in the seat, casually put a knee up on the back of the driver seat’s chair to achieve a proper lounging position, and say, “This one being – what, exactly? Going to drive me to the docks and put one between my eyes? Seems a bit... _cold_ , even for you.”

“Jesus,” Lloyd says. “He knows he’s gonna die and he’s still fucking annoying.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that your faces were undoubtedly captured by cameras back in the fight,” Len says. “So when they find my corpse, you two are going to go down for so long your little buddy Cichowski’s going to be drinking champagne in thanks on your graves –”

“Don’t you fucking talk about him,” Peterson snarls. “Don’t you dare fucking talk about him. Not after what you did to him and Mary.”

“What I did was my _job_ ,” Len says. “And what he didn’t do was his. Oath to protect the laws of this city – something you two’ve clearly forgotten about.”

That makes them uncomfortable, at least – he can see Lloyd’s hands tightening on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white, and Petersen gnawing at his lip like it’ll make this easier on his conscience. 

They’re not innately corrupt, these two, or at least they don’t think of themselves that way. But corruption is something you do, not something you are, and Len has no sympathy for them.

“So what’s the plan?” Len says, goading them. If he’s going to die, he’s going to go down fighting every last step of the way. “Well?”

“Shut up,” Lloyd snarls.

“You gonna take me down the docks where someone’ll see you and snitch? Or maybe cut the crap and just shoot me here in the car so the CSIs can find my blood?” 

Sorry in advance, Barry. This wasn’t how Len wanted him to find out about who Len was.

“Or maybe –”

“Shut the _fuck_ up!” Lloyd roars.

The car swerves.

“Better be careful there,” Len says sweetly. “Speeding is the leading cause of all traffic fatalities –”

“God, you’re a pest,” Petersen says in disgust. “I can’t wait for the Families to get rid of you.”

That shuts Len up.

For exactly three seconds, anyway.

“You’ve gone over to the _Families_?” he asks, sneer curling his lips. He should’ve known: corruption always tells, in the end, and these guys were real close to someone just convicted of getting too close and personal with the Families. Fuck, he hates corrupt cops. “Really? You two? Clearly I’m gonna have to have a much closer chat with Cichowski when I get outta here –” 

If. 

“– if he missed a chance to turn over some new Family sell-outs when doing a deal for sentencing…”

“We’re not sell-outs, Snart, no matter what you’d like to think,” Petersen says with a sneer. “We just hate _you_.”

“Like you said,” Lloyd says. “We’ve been seen leaving the site with you. But if you told us to drop you off in some location to go keep on investigating, well, what can we do? You’re the boss, right, _Captain_?”

“Some location where some Family thugs just _happen_ to be waiting to take me off your hands,” Len says. “God, you’re so fucking stupid.”

That gets them both to tense up.

“Not sell-outs my ass,” Len continues, rolling his eyes. “If you weren’t before, you will be the second you give me up – or do you really think they won’t turn around and blackmail you the second they need something from you?”

That clearly hadn’t occurred to them.

“Walt –” Petersen starts.

“Ignore him,” Lloyd says. “He’s trying to get under our skin, that’s all – if they try anything like that, we’ll fuck them up.”

“Because the Families are so bad at blackmail that it’ll be that easy,” Len says.

“We’re committed,” Lloyd tells Petersen, ignoring Len. “If we turn back now, he’ll just have us run up on _attempted_ murder charges.”

He’s not wrong, just a touch smarter than Len would like him to be.

“Sure I will,” he says, all friendly-like. “But you’d probably get out pretty quick, s’long as I wasn’t dead – momentarily deranged with grief, let’s say, over your good buddy going down, making you do things you’d later regret –”

“Oh, I’m not going to regret this for one fucking minute, Snart,” Lloyd says. “We all know you’ll go after us with every damn thing you’ve got for this if we don’t take you down first.”

Again: not wrong, just smarter than Len would prefer.

“You’re not going to be satisfied till you take the whole goddamn department down,” Petersen adds, nodding.

“If they’re all corrupt, then they all deserve to go down,” Len snaps, his temper flaring up. He’s usually pretty good at keeping his cool, but damn if he doesn’t hate corruption more than anything else on this goddamn planet. “Some things are more _important_ than your fucking little code of blue, and if you had any goddamn sense of loyalty to this city, you’d realize that.”

“We’re the ones _protecting_ this city –”

“No, you’re just on a fucking power trip that you’ve _mistaken_ for protecting the city,” Len says. “Taking me out to get killed like this – you’re just like that Hood-Arrow asshole over in Starling, ‘cept you don’t have the balls to do the job yourself. Stop it with this ‘protecting the city’ bullshit! You’re the ones people need to be afraid of, you assholes that think you can take justice into your own hands, playing judge, jury, and executioner all at once. You’re not better than the rest of humanity just because you’ve got a badge!”

“Shut up!” Lloyd shouts. “Peterson, if he says one more _fucking_ word, shoot him in the knee.” 

“But the blood –”

“We’ll ditch the car if we have to. Just – keep him quiet.”

Len shuts up, seething. 

If he lives – a big if – he’s going to come after these assholes so hard that their _grandchildren_ are going to feel it. 

It’s a tense but silent ten minutes – nine minutes, fourteen seconds, to be precise – before Lloyd pulls them in near a warehouse downtown, an old steel foundry. 

Len knows this place.

Unfortunately, with his hands tied the way they are, all that means is that he has enough time to brace himself as they drag him out of the car and throw him down one of the old smelting vats. 

Smooth sheer round sides – even if Len’s hands weren’t tied, he wouldn’t be able to get out, not without help. 

“Enjoy your – heh – Family reunion,” Petersen says. 

That was _almost_ a good one.

Len settles down to wait, since there’s nothing else he can do about it.

He wishes he could at least remove the stupid mask, since it’s getting itchy, but he can’t get his taped-up fingers to pop the clasp.

It’s not too long – eighteen minutes, forty-three seconds – before he starts to hear voices. 

Voices he knows. 

Voices –

Hold up. Something’s wrong. 

Something is very, very, _very_ wrong. 

Len stands up and presses himself as close as he can to the wall of the vat, straining to hear, but no. He’s not wrong. He _does_ know those voices – Family lieutenants, people he’s worked for or with and sold out to the Feds and the CCPD with a smile on his face.

But if he’s right about those voices, then everything else he knows is wrong.

The world turned upside down –

Almost as if the thought acted as a summoning, Len suddenly finds himself in motion. Not motion of his own accord, but a sickening blurring sensation not unlike being on a runaway whirligig at the local carnival.

Next thing he knows, he’s not in the vat – he’s outside the warehouse, in an alleyway, and the Flash is looking at him.

Len coughs and clears his throat. “Rough ride,” he croaks, waiting for his stomach to settle down and his side and leg to stop acting like they just got shot all over again.

“Sorry about that,” the Flash says, sounding apologetic. “It doesn’t feel bad to me, but I know it can be hard on people – feel free to throw up if you need to.”

“Inside the mask?”

“…ick. Never mind.”

“Yeah, thought so.” Len straightens up with a force of will. He’s thankful for the leg braces, as much as he hates them; if he’d been using his crutches, Lloyd and Petersen would’ve taken them away from him and he’d be truly screwed. “Thanks for the rescue, kid. That was a bad situation – which seems like it ain’t all that uncommon when we’re meeting.”

“All things considered, I feel like the train crash was probably worse,” the Flash says dryly. “Between the two.”

Len snorts, not disagreeing. “Yeah, true, but I hate being trapped in confined spaces. Old phobia from prison –” 

Only partially true; the real trauma came from having being trapped in a tiny room being tortured for three days. Prison, with its legal requirements about things like fresh air and contact with the outside world, was comparatively tame. 

“– you know how it is. Anyway, how did you know where I was...?”

Yes, okay, he’s paranoid. But as tonight showed, he’s clearly not paranoid _enough_.

The Flash shrugs. “Iris made pretty clear that the whole thing was an act to make sure STAR Labs didn’t get bombed by some corporate thugs looking for merchandising rights,” he says, his shoulders going up around his ears in what seemed to be embarrassment. “And she said that you had some questions to ask me, questions that might convince you that I’m not actually evil, except – well, you never showed up.”

“So she started worrying?” Len asks, amused. 

“She said one of her friends –” Danvers, no doubt. “– told her you were very good with timing, so she started freaking out a bit. And then Eddie showed up –” 

Interesting – ‘Eddie’, not ‘Thawne’. 

Could Thawne be…?

No, surely not. Len’s met the guy; he’s not that good a liar.

“– and he was freaking out, too, because he was getting pulled around the scene on a bunch of stupid stuff until he realized that the cops around him were intentionally delaying him, but he didn’t know why until he realized you were gone in a car that didn’t have him in it and realized it must have been Family cops –”

“Not Family cops,” Len says grimly. “Regular cops. Cichowski – that’s a guy I took down for corruption – well, turns out he has some old buddies out looking for a little revenge and hoping the Families would do the job for them.”

“...shit,” the Flash says.

“No kidding,” Len says. “But we’ve got bigger problems.”

“We do?”

“I’m going to do something very unlike me and take it on faith that you actually want what’s best for this city, no questions asked,” Len says grimly. He doesn’t want to do it, especially given that there’s a chance this Flash guy might be the killer Barry’s after, but he doesn’t think he has a choice. He has to take a chance. “Because in that warehouse right behind you is a bigger danger to this city than anything you might represent.”

The Flash turned to look at the building. “What do you mean?”

“I heard voices,” Len says. “Voices of Family lieutenants, ones I recognized. Rizzo Hovsepian, Darius Petrosyan –”

“Darbinyans,” the Flash says, proving that he recognized the names of some of the most fearsome enforcers in the city, or at least could identify it when they sounded Armenian.

“– as well as Simon Boccaccio and Giuseppe Condutti.”

The Flash’s head jerks back a bit in shock. “ _Santinis_? Santinis and Darbinyans in the same place? Either they hate you more than they hate the Feds, which is unlikely no matter how good you are, or...”

“Or two different Families - the ones most famously and most viciously known for being constantly at war with each other - are for some unknown reason working together on some type of joint project,” Len finishes. “You see the problem.”

“Yeah, I do. That would be – bad. Really, really bad. What’s the plan?”

“Right now? The plan is for you to get my hands loose,” Len says, holding his hands out in front of him. “And then we go inside and try to learn everything we can about what they’re up to. In the event it’s something we can sabotage or delay, we do that, but our number one goal is to find out what’s gotten these guys teaming up and make sure the info gets back to headquarters. Family stuff’s never good, and the bigger it is, the worse it is. You in?”

The Flash nods, his jaw firming with determination. 

Len _really_ hopes that this guy’s just being misled and that the theoretical other speedster really is the one behind all those disappearances and possible murders; the kid really seems like he’s trying to do the right thing.

In a ridiculously wrong way, of course, but he’s _trying_ ; that counts for something in Len’s book.

“First things first, though,” Len says, nodding down to his hands.

“Right. I’ve got you.”

The Flash’s hands move as fast as his feet do, apparently, and it’s only a second before Len’s hands are free from duct tape, zip ties, and handcuffs all. 

“Thanks,” Len says with a sigh, flexing his stiff fingers and wincing as proper blood flow returns. “Appreciate it. Now, let’s get down to business.”

And then he reaches up and takes off his mask.


	14. 14

What.

What?

_What?!_

Barry feels like his thoughts are simultaneously moving a million miles a second while also experiencing total blue screen of death crash, which is a weird experience. It's like he's thinking every single thought he could possibly think all at once, except each and every thought can best be described as "?!"

Captain Cold is Leonard Snart.

Leonard Snart -

Leonard -

Len.

 _Barry's_ Len.

Len is a cop.

Len is a cop in internal affairs.

Len is _Captain Cold the might-be supervillain_.

_What?!_

It's not that Barry hasn't mostly dropped the whole supervillain angle - Iris is vouching for Captain Snart, after all, and despite his original belief that she was being very effectively manipulated by him, Barry knows and relies on her good judgment of people. If she's been able to work with Captain Cold for days, even weeks, and still think he's well-intentioned, then he probably is.

Having that little revelation where he realized that certain things could look extremely suspicious from the perspective of a third party that didn't know about metahumans and the Reverse Flash had also helped.

So, really, when you think about it, you know, he _sort of_ knew, right?

No. 

No, he didn't.

He had no idea.

He’d barely even accepted the not-a-supervillain thing.

Sort of.

Okay, sure, Barry and Cisco got into a huge fight over the whole "is he a supervillain or not" thing when they got the message about Iris being kidnapped, with Barry insisting there had to be another explanation and Cisco insisting that they were clearly right all along. And that whole thing basically descended into Barry accusing Cisco of wanting Iris to be in danger just to prove he was right and Cisco calling Barry a delusional optimist that risked people getting hurt and Barry threatening to just leave without getting Cisco's help and Cisco telling Barry that he could find his suit anywhere even with the comms turned off and then Wells'd made everything worse by jumping in and Barry was still so pissed about everything and - 

Barry's starting to think that maybe running at speed through the power plant on his way to the showdown in order to burn out all the comms through a makeshift EMP might, in retrospect, have been a mistake, because he could _really_ use some third-party confirmation that what he's seeing is really what he's seeing.

Which he's pretty sure it is.

But -

Len?!

 _His boyfriend_ Len?

(Okay, not exactly full on boyfriends, they'd promised each other that they'd go slow, but they were definitely _heading_ in that direction, or certainly enough in that direction to explain why Barry maybe-kind of-sorta-actually-definitely has been doodling Len Allen on some of the spare sheets in STAR Labs. Which is a totally reasonable thing for a grown man to do, really.)

But still: _what?_

How had the fact that Len was a freaking _cop_ never come up? Much less a _police captain_! They work in the same precinct! 

Well, okay, it's not that implausible that they've never run into each other. Barry works up in the attic in his on-site lab, while Captain Cold works in the mostly deserted offices on the far distant side of the building, presumably in the hope that he doesn't get into as many fights with the regular cops as would otherwise be likely given the nature of his job.

Well, given the nature of his job, it probably wouldn't be fights, just glares and not-so-muffled whispers and maybe some light sabotage when they thought they could get away with it.

The precinct sometimes reminds Barry unpleasantly of middle school.

Still! The second Barry mentioned that he was a CSI affiliated with the CCPD, Len could have brought it up; why didn't he?

 _You didn't bring up the Flash thing either_ , a little voice in his head reminds him.

It's not the same, though! 

_Sorta is._

Is _not_!

...great, now Barry's arguing with himself like an idiot.

But, like, it wasn’t like there were signs or anything! Len uses crutches, and Captain Cold –

Okay, Captain Cold was always either sitting down or – the few times Barry saw him walking anywhere – he was usually limping, and Len _did_ say that his doctor gave him some new leg braces that he hates like hell because they make him all stiff and stuff, and which he could only use for a few hours a day so he limited it to when he was going out on work business –

There was _no way_ for Barry to have put that together, though! 

And, wait, didn't Captain Singh say that Captain Snart was _investigating_ Barry? Was the whole dating thing just part of some sting plan? Surely not - that seems like it’s _horrifically unethical_ , right? - but then again, Singh also pointed out that Snart has a history of undercover work, and Barry knows he has no staff to go do things for him, so maybe he just thought that they could get to know each other -

Oh, man, if it really was just all an investigation, Barry will just have to go throw himself off a skyscraper or something -

"- better not be evil," Snart (Len?!) is saying.

"Uh, what?"

"I said, you'd better not turn out to be evil," Len (Barry can't help but think of him as Len, not when he has Len's face and Len's eyes and _is Len_ ) repeats. "I really don't want to have to explain to my boyfriend that I teamed up with the guy who killed his mom."

Aww, Len thinks of them as boyfriends, too!

Wait.

Killed his _mom_ -

"Ohhhh," Barry says, because holy crap, that actually kind of makes sense in a weird, _weird_ sort of way. If you know that the Flash exists and don't know about the Reverse Flash, and someone told you that their mom got killed by a guy running faster than lightning -

Yeah, okay. 

Reasonable deduction.

 _Hilariously wrong_ deduction, but, like, reasonable. Kind of. 

No wonder Captain Cold seemed to have a grudge against the Flash! 

Awww, Len was carrying a grudge on Barry's behalf. No one but Iris has ever been angry on Barry's behalf before.

(Len thinks they're boyfriends!)

"What, exactly, does 'ohhhh' mean in this context?" Len asks dryly. “Kind of a weird reaction to someone accusing you of murder.”

Oops, yeah, that was weird.

"Uh, oh, no, definitely not. I’ve never killed anyone's mom." Barry says quickly. "I mean, I’ve never killed anyone! Well, there was this one guy who was falling off a balcony and I tried to save him, but he shoved my arm away and jumped, that was really traumatic. Plus there was this other guy with lightning powers that, like, thought it made him immune to electrocution and it apparently, uh, didn't, and - yeah, that was awful, too. But I didn't actually _kill_ anyone -"

"Please stop talking," Len says, but his eyes are doing that adorable crinkle thing around the edges that he does when he thinks something is funny and kind of cute. 

Heh, Len thinks Barry's cute even when he's the Flash.

(Len! Thinks! They're! Boyfriends!)

"We _are_ trying to be sneaky here," Len continues. 

Right.

Families.

Mortal peril.

(Boyfriends!)

"Right," Barry says. "Uh - I could run us inside really quick, if that would help?"

Len considers it. "Do you leave behind sparks every time you run?"

"...yes?"

"Hm. Not that subtle."

"Right. Er. I could go up the side of the building instead?"

Len looks intrigued by that. "Really? At once, or do you need some sort of running start..?"

"Running start," Barry tells him, secretly pleased all over again by the fact that his boyfriend ( _boyfriend!_ ) is a bit of a nerd. Sure, possibly also a bit of a liar and maybe working as undercover cop, but - boyfriend! Yes, Barry's aware that his prioritization system is probably pretty screwed up, but...boyfriend! "It's just speed, not, like, sticky feet or anything."

"I was thinking gravity or friction manipulation, but that's fair," Len replies. "Okay, take us up, and get us up high - the old joke about bad guys never looking up is surprisingly accurate."

Barry grins. His boyfriend was an undercover cop! That's so cool! 

...okay, he was-slash-is also maybe investigating Barry, which is a real downer if Barry thinks about it too long, but they'll deal with that later.

(Boyfriend!...okay, he'll stop now. Maybe. Sort of...nah. Boyfriends!)

Barry runs them up to the second floor in a split second.

Len looks around once they stop, then frowns. "No, we need to be higher; at least another floor up."

Barry complies, but once they're up on the (rather rickety) steel scaffolding that makes up most of the third floor, he asks, "Why's that? If they don't look up..."

Len's shaking his head. "They don't," he says. "But I was trapped in one of those things -" 

He jabs a finger at one of the steel vats.

" - remember? They'll go up to the second floor to look into them to see if I'm there." He makes a face, half disgust and half the remnants of a recent fear, which makes Barry really want to hug him except for the fact that he's currently the Flash and Len doesn't know he's the Flash and it would be really weird for a random superhero to just hug you, right? Probably right. "Hate things like that - like a modern day oubliette, where you leave someone and forget about 'em. Monstrous. But yeah, that's the issue. Now, settle down, we don't want them to spot us...why red, if you don’t mind me asking?"

"What?"

"Your costume. Why red? Ain't exactly subtle."

"I have no idea," Barry confesses. "I think it was the only color available in this fabric at first - I need it to deal with the friction when I run or else my clothing lights on fire."

Though he’s really happy that Cisco eventually managed to find a friction-proofing agent he could use on the rest of his clothing. Barry uses his powers way too much – if he hadn’t found a way to stop the fires, he’d have ended up naked at the office at least a dozen times by now.

Len smirks at that, then his expression fades into something more wistful. "I know someone who'd get a kick outta seeing that."

Barry can't help but smile a little - that must be Mick, Len's pyromaniac friend, the one in the coma.

Len’s smile fades a second later, replaced by a serious expression that is, somehow, just as ridiculously attractive. "They're coming. Don't move."

Right, right, Family bad guys. 

Two Families.

Which - _what the hell?_ The Darbinyans and the Santinis hate each other. Most of the time, when they meet even by accident, they go to war. Barry's talking Montague and Capulet levels of "I hate you and will fight you wherever" sort of war, the sort that gets both sides in trouble because they're too busy fighting to pay attention to anyone or anything else. 

And, like, yeah, they both hate traitorous rats who turn out to be undercover cops, but still...

"Which one did you spy on, anyway?" Barry whispers.

"Both," Len hisses back. "I was a freelance thief. Now be still!"

Barry sits tight.

His boyfriend is _so cool_.

...his boyfriend might not be his boyfriend after Barry reveals that he's lied about the whole Flash thing.

Crap.

Not good.

Maybe Len'll be more inclined to be lenient because he's _also_ been omitting information?

Assuming this whole thing wasn't about spying on Barry in the first place.

But if it was, why would he describe Barry as his boyfriend when he doesn't know that Barry's the one listening?

Maybe he was describing some _other_ -

Get a grip on yourself, Barry; the likelihood of there being _two_ people with mothers killed by speedsters in Central City seems like it would be extremely low. He was _clearly_ describing you.

Maybe it's some sort of clever fake-out - but if it's a fake-out, wouldn't that require that he already know that Barry is the Flash? There's no way he could know that.

Is there? 

How would Barry know, after all? If someone who knew about him decided to fake ignorance and -

An elbow drives into Barry's side the same second a hand slaps over his mouth, muffling his automatic yelp of surprise.

"Real bad at this whole sitting still thing, ain't you?" Len hisses in Barry's ear. "Whatever line of thought has you buzzing - and I mean that very literally in your case - _stop thinking it_."

Oops.

"Nod if you understand me."

Barry nods.

Len lets him go.

Barry focuses on staying still and listening to the people below them. Most of them are on the ground level, but as Len predicted, two climbed up to the second floor to look through the various steel vats, presumably searching for Len.

"Nothing," one of them finally shouts down. "They must've gotten cold feet."

"Doesn't matter," one of the ones on the ground floor - Giuseppe Condutti, Barry recognizes him from his mug shot that's hung up on the wall to be used as a dartboard back in the precinct, the guy's basically untouchable but everyone hates him - calls back. "Getting Snart woulda just been icing on the cake, after all –”

“Some pretty damn nice icing,” one of the other guys says loudly. “Fucking snitch.”

“– the _important thing_ ,” Condutti says, ignoring him, “is that we’ve got these guys by the short hairs just for dealing with us. And just in time, too."

Another guy, one of the Darbinyans, scoffs. "Yeah, right. What’s it matter? If they got cold feet, then Snart's gonna kill 'em -"

" _Ice_ them," Barry and Len mutter under their breaths in accidental unison, then flash momentary grins at each other.

(Heh. _Flash_ grins.)

"- and that makes 'em useless. Unless you wanna have _another_ cop on the payroll kicking up their heels in Iron Heights?"

"Hey, that means they ain't on the payroll no more, huh?"

Laughter.

"What I never understood about corruption," Len murmurs, scowling down at the mobsters milling about below. "How do you sell your soul to someone who'll sell you up the river in a heartbeat..?"

He sounds disgusted and a little murderous.

Barry wants to give him a hug.

He says, “Shhhh!” instead, because he’s stupid like that.

Len rolls his eyes.

"What's the difference in having two more pigs on the hook, anyway?" one of the guys asks as the two on the ladder climb down. "Just another two ain't gonna affect the big day."

...big day? That sounds ominous.

"You never know," Condutti says with a shrug. "There's always some more strings that might need to get tugged. Lotta stuff happening all at once, lotta coordination -"

"And the Santinis insisting on having one of their men at every location is making that so much smoother," one of the Darbyinians – Barry’s pretty sure this one is Darius Petrosyan, again judging by what he remembers of the man’s mugshot – sneers.

"Like your bosses don't want the same," Condutti snaps back. "The only reason you lot're so paranoid about being stabbed in the back is because you're always plotting to do it to someone else and you assume everybody's like you!"

"Hey, hey, let's not get heated here, all right?" one of the other guys says, stepping forward with his hands up. He's a big guy, with a sleepy expression - but according to what Barry recalls of his files, he's Rizzo Hovsepian, the head of the Darbiniyan's most efficient disposal unit.

And Barry isn't talking about garbage.

"Remember," Hovsepian continues. "We might hate your Santini guts, and you might think nothing of ours, but we're all agreed on one thing."

"What?" Condutti asks skeptically.

"The Ranskahovs are worse."

That gets a laugh all around.

"Yeah, no kidding," Condutti says. "Penny-pinching Ruskie slobs - they keep trying to _reduce_ security, you know that? Says it cuts into profits too much."

"Let ‘em try. The bosses'll never agree, not for a minute, not for something this important –"

"The _Ranskahovs_ are involved, too?" Barry breathes. 

"What on earth could get not just two, but _three_ separate Families to do anything together?" Len murmurs, agreeing, glancing at Barry with a disturbed expression that Barry's pretty sure is mirrored on his own face.

“–doesn’t matter if these two go down for it,” Condutti is saying. “So what? We’ll get Snart after the big day.”

“Everyone’s always talking about how great things’ll be after the big day,” Petrosyan says, snorting. “The bosses are all sure of it; this’ll happen and that’ll happen and the green will be fucking greener and the trees’ll start raining money and it’ll be just like the good ol’ days again before the crackdowns and the paranoia and shit.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Old days are just that,” Petrosyan says. “ _Old_. We don’t need this. We’re strong enough without it.”

“Sure you are,” Condutti replies, rolling his eyes. “Declining profits, snitches everywhere, Feds at our backs every way you look – things are fucking rosy. Don’t talk out your ass. The bosses know what they’re doing.”

“’course they do,” Petrosyan says, though he sounds...doubtful. “Still, we’re the lieutenants. It’s our job to plan for the worst.”

“Ain’t no planning for the worst this time,” the other Santini, Boccaccio, laughs. “It goes well and we get it all, or it blows up and we’re all fucked. That much happening, all at one time? We go down, we _all_ go down.”

“There’ll be security up the ass,” Hovsepian says dismissively. “Now c’mon, if Snart’s not here, there’s no reason to stick around.”

“Damn,” Len murmurs. 

Barry agrees. If only they would give more details...!

The thugs start filing out, still talking amongst themselves – split into two groups, Santinis on one side, Darbiniyans on the other, and only Condutti and Hovsepian still talking together, half-glaring at each other even as they pretend to smile. 

“– best whore in the Twin Cities –”

“– so much fucking work still to be done –”

“– always knew he was a pig, that Snart guy, I’m telling you, he had a vibe –”

“–coming up soon. Running around like a goddamn maniac to get it all ready–”

“–mouth like a Hoover–”

“–can’t wait till we get ‘im, back-stabbing bastard–”

“–all the coordination, y’know? So many parties all together with half the city already running around–”

The door shuts behind them.

Barry shifts a little, figuring he can run them out now.

Len’s hand shoots out, grabs his arm. “Not yet. Not till they’re gone.”

Right.

Barry waits, trying to keep still and quiet even though he’s practically vibrating with the need to talk over what, if anything, they’ve uncovered.

Recalling Len’s earlier comment, though, he tries not to do that, either.

After about three minutes, he whispers, "Is that enough time?"

"I have no idea," Len whispers back. "I'm just guessing."

Barry frowns and straightens up. "What do you mean you're ‘just guessing’?” he demands at normal volume. “You're the undercover guy!" 

"Yeah," Len says, also returning to normal volume – which for him is the lazy nasal drawl that Barry’s already become embarrassingly fond of. " _Undercover_. Meaning that I'm not usually up here eavesdropping from the shadows; I'm down there, hanging out with everyone and asking questions to find out more that I then turn over later. This method’s a lot less convenient."

"Oh," Barry says. That makes sense. "Then how do you know...?"

"Childhood interest in spy movies."

"...what."

Len did _not_ just risk them being discovered by evil Family thugs based on spy movies, did he?

...no, actually, that sounds just like something Len would do.

"Oh, relax. Been testing out certain tropes since I was a tot," Len says, smirking at Barry's dismay. "Just for fun. Most of ‘em are trash, but people really don't ever look up without a good reason, even criminals."

Barry's boyfriend is such a troll.

Luckily Barry knew that already.

Though of course, finding out about the whole Len-is-Captain-Cold thing clearly shows that Barry doesn't know _everything_ about him...like, say, about whether and why Len was (is?) investigating him...

Hmm. Maybe Barry can do some undercover digging of his own. 

"You're a cop now, though, right?" Barry says casually.

"For all intents and purposes, I always was," Len says dryly. "Ever since I graduated from the academy. But yeah, sure, now it's officially known that I am."

"No, I mean – well. Now that you’re, y’know, official, do you still do investigations?"

Len gestures wordlessly to their surroundings, giving Barry a highly skeptical look.

“No, I didn’t mean – these are _clearly_ unique circumstances!” 

“I’ll give you that,” Len allows. “And, yeah, sure, sometimes. Not often; most people I meet know what I do now.”

“But if someone _didn’t_ know, would you –”

“Are you stalking me or something?”

“What? No!”

“Then stop asking about me and focus back on the Families,” Len says. “But first, can you get us out of here?”

Barry flushes red, mumbles something in the affirmative, and runs them both out of there. He just takes them back down to the alley he originally rescued Len to –

Man, is Barry glad he listened to Iris and came looking! A dozen minutes later and the Families would’ve had Len in their grasp – and Barry would never have learned what happened to Len.

Or, worse, he would have - but while on the job.

Barry should always listen to Iris, basically, that’s the lesson he’s getting out of this. He’d hesitated, when she’d first started worrying – he’d been a little insulted by their whole “rescue the damsel in distress” tactic when Iris’d oh-so-casually revealed it once he’d “rescued” her, so he’d initially dismissed her concerns with the suggestion that Len’d just ditched or something, but she’d smacked Barry on the shoulder and told him that Len was a professional. 

And, well, even to Barry it seemed a little unlikely that Captain Cold would go to all this trouble and then not follow up. 

Then Eddie ran up in a panic, too, so Barry figured there was no harm in running a circuit to see where they’d gone. When he saw the cop car in the slum districts…

Yeah, Barry can put two and two together. 

“Thanks,” Len says after a few minutes of leaning against the wall, breathing hard and clutching at his side. Barry’s been pretending it’s not happening, since Len generally prefers it that way when they’re on a date and there’s no reason to think he doesn’t now, too, even though he’s not using the crutches. Barry can even see a bit of his leg braces flashing through the gap between his boots and his pants, now that he’s looking for it.

Wait, hold up, Len’s little work-related accident that made him retire! Captain Singh had said that Len – well, that Captain Snart – got tortured and shot when they found out about his undercover work…crap, and Barry’d thought it was some sort of criminal job gone wrong, inspiring Len to go straight.

Was he _ever_ wrong about that.

And yet, despite all that, here Len is, seconds after nearly being thrown back to the nonexistent mercies of the Families, turning right around and going right back into Family investigative work. 

Just – wow. 

He really is fearless.

After all, look at how casually he unmasked himself in front of Barry! 

Okay, he didn’t know it was Barry.

He certainly wasn’t afraid to let the Flash know his identity, anyway. 

...Barry really should do the same.

Yeah.

He should

He will.

Any minute now.

Really!

Any minute now...

“Okay,” Len says after another moment in which Barry mentally kicks himself for not doing or saying anything. “That was instructive.”

“Was it?” Barry asks, a little skeptically. “They didn’t really say anything.”

“We know they’re working together, at least three Families, maybe more. We know the rank-and-file are not necessarily happy about it,” Len points out. “And most of all, we know that there’s a ‘big day’ coming up at some point soon that they’re all working towards.” He frowns. “Something on a day when half the city’s already running around. Don’t know what that’d be, though; nothing gets _this_ city moving.”

“Sad, but true,” Barry agrees. “If Gotham’s the city that never sleeps, Central’s the city that never goes above a mild stroll, no matter how urgent the situation.”

“No kidding. Like when there’s a tornado actually visible on the horizon heading your way, and everyone just sort of stands there and gawks –”

“I...may have done that a few times.”

More than a few.

“No, I know, me too,” Len says. “It’s a Central City thing. It’s still dumb.”

Barry has to agree to that. 

“Thanks again for your help today,” Len adds. “I still want to ask you some questions about what you're up to – I don’t let anyone off the hook that easy – but this Family stuff has to take priority. They're poison.”

“I get that,” Barry says. That’s probably his cue to leave, but he lingers, shifting from one foot to the other. 

He knows that he _should_ really unmask himself, now that he knows who Len is. Before now, it was just a matter of omission, of not mentioning everything about his life to Len, but if he leaves without saying anything, then he’s making a deliberate choice to lie to Len – to not tell him when he could –

It’s a good moment for it, too; Len’s clearly focused on the Family thing, not his Flash hunt, and he’s _definitely_ not thinking of Barry Allen, even if he does seem to think of Barry as his boyfriend – man, Barry wishes Len was a little less clever and let Barry unobtrusively ask some questions about his investigation of Barry, but noooooo, Len's too sharp for that to work.

He wants to think the best of Len, really – or, hell, Barry’s enough of a sappy romantic that he’d be totally happy with a story that went with Len starting to investigate him and then falling in love and regretting it, that would be awesome, best get-together story to tell at dinner parties ever, right? – but either way he really desperately wants to _know_.

The best way to know would be to ask.

The only way to justify asking would be to unmask.

But at the same time, all the reasons he hasn’t already told Len about the whole Flash thing still apply – he didn’t tell him at the start because he didn’t know him that well, and once he did know him, he knew about Len’s hatred of any perceived betrayal, not to mention the risk of one of his enemies figuring out who Len is and what he means and using him against Barry, putting him in danger because of Barry, and really, in the end, it was just easier _not_ to tell him.

But now...

God, Barry can't decide. Should he say or not? Is he being smart about it, or is he just being a coward? How will he ever get the answers he wants if he _doesn't_ unmask? Which approach is more likely to get him what he wants (Len not angry at him and still dating him) and which one would result in - 

“Hey, hold up, don’t move for a second,” Len says suddenly, interrupting Barry's train of thought as he takes a few steps forward towards Barry. “You’ve got something on the back of your cowl, spider or something – must’ve gotten on you while we were in that warehouse – lemme just get it –”

He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of Barry’s cowl.

Then he yanks it down.

“Hey!” Barry yowls.

“Barry?!” Len exclaims.

Oh _shit_.

“Uh,” Barry says. “I can – explain –”

“You really can’t,” Len says. 

Barry’s shoulders droop. “I - can’t?”

“No, you can’t! I can’t believe that trick actually _worked_! Jeez, Allen, have a bit more spatial awareness, okay? What if I’d had a knife or something?”

“If you had a knife, you wouldn’t have been going for my cowl –” Barry pauses. “Wait. _That’s_ what I can’t explain? The fact that you just pulled off my cowl? _That's_ the part of this you're having trouble with?!”

“I literally learned that trick in third grade,” Len says. “Literally. Come on!”

“That’s what you’re getting out of this?!”

“Oh, I already figured out it was you,” Len says. “Only about ten minutes ago, sure, but still, it gave me the chance to get over my surprise – no, don’t look at me like that, I did! While we were up there, eavesdropping, you kept forgetting to keep doing that thing to disguise your voice. Vibrating your vocal cords, I’m guessing?”

“Uh, yeah,” Barry says, bewildered. “You – recognized my voice?”

Len gives him a look.

“Oh, right. Undercover guy; you’ve got to be good with voices.”

“There’s that,” Len says dryly. “Plus there’s the fact that you’ve had your tongue near my tonsils a few times; I think I have your voice pretty much memorized by now.”

Barry blushes. “Yeah, that too,” he says, unable to keep himself from smiling a little. He's a dork, okay, he's not shy to admit it. “It makes sense you’d recognize your boyfriend’s voice – I mean, I don’t mean to presume, but you said earlier –”

“Oh, we’re definitely boyfriends, Allen,” Len says, and there's a little hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Don’t you dare back out on me now.”

Now Barry’s full-on grinning and he doesn't care who sees it. “I wasn’t sure, you know, we’ve done all that talking about going slow –”

“Going slow,” Len interrupts, groaning. “ _Going slow_. Now I get it. _That’s_ why it’s ironic – we’re going _slow_ , and you have super-speed powers that make you usually go really _fast_ –”

“Yes, exactly!” Barry exclaims. He knew Len would like those. Honestly, this whole revelation thing is going so much better than Barry thought this was going to go!

“I’m going to have so many puns about this.”

“You have no idea how hard it’s been not to break them out,” Barry confesses. 

“I can imagine,” Len says, looking mildly aggravated – almost certainly by the missed punning opportunity. The man’s a pun fiend. Barry's never been so grateful. “Lemme guess, you didn’t want to tell me because you weren’t sure whether I was trustworthy?”

“At least in the beginning,” Barry agrees. “I don’t mean it as an insult or anything, of course –”

“No, I’m glad you have at least _some_ self-preservation instincts,” Len says. “You’re too trusting; I’m amazed you haven’t gone streaking down Main Street yelling it out.”

“‘Streaking’ down Main Street? Really?”

Len smirks.

“What about you, though?” Barry asks curiously. “Captain Singh said you were investigating me –”

“I told him not to do that,” Len sighs. “Guess he couldn’t resist. And yeah, I was; I thought you were corrupt.”

“Wait, what? Me or the Flash?”

“Both,” Len says wryly. “Given that I didn’t know you were one person. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I was probably wrong.”

“Listen, I can see why you’d suspect the Flash, what with the disappearances,” Barry says, choosing to ignore that 'probably'. Len's already admitted to being paranoid beyond all reason; there's no way to get rid of that last hint of doubt other than to keep proving himself. “But me as in _Barry Allen_? I don't even have any parking tickets!" Almost certainly because he doesn't own a car, but whatever. "Why in the world would you think _I_ was corrupt?”

“Well, you disappearing for nine months like that –”

“I was in a coma!”

“You _were_?” Len says blankly, as if that's the most surprising thing that's come up in the entire conversation.

“Well, yeah. What did you think I was doing?” Barry asks, equally blank.

“Literally _anything else_ ,” Len says. “Going off and joining a Family, investigating what’s going on with the Flash...anything! A guy doesn’t get out of a nine-month coma and jump out of bed, back into his job and with a new and improved set of abs!”

Barry can feel his face going red. “Yeah, those were kind of a shock,” he admits. “And – hey, when did you see my abs?!”

They’ve totally not gone that far. Barry would remember!

“Surveillance photos,” Len says. “Don’t ask; it’ll just make you paranoid.”

“...I’m becoming more paranoid _already_ ,” Barry says, and then it suddenly hits him what’s really going on. He knows Len. He _knows_ Len, and what matters to him, and it's all so clear why Len would bother going after such a small fry matter personally. “It’s Mick, isn’t it? You assumed I had to be up to something during those nine months, because if I actually was in a coma and managed to get that much better...”

Len makes a face. He probably intends for it to be a rueful expression of distaste, but it comes across more like someone just ripped his heart out of his chest. “Yeah. I can’t keep hoping for another miracle that I know ain’t gonna happen.” He grimaces. “They’re saying he might not – this month – if he doesn’t wake up, we’re gonna have to start talking end-of-life options.”

“Oh, shit,” Barry says, shocked. He’d known things weren’t good, of course, but...somehow he’d been assuming this whole time that Mick would eventually wake up and he’d get to meet him one day. But of course not all comas were like his, with a happy ending. “Damn, Len, I’m so sorry.”

Len shrugs. “So you actually were in a coma?” he says, obviously not wanting to talk about it further. “For real?”

“It wasn’t a regular coma,” Barry assures him. “My heart was moving so quick the doctors couldn’t identify it on a monitor, but there was nothing physically wrong with me – well, once the other signs of being hit by lightning healed up. I have super-fast healing now, so it was pretty quick.”

Len frowns. “Has your heart slowed down?”

“No; why?”

“What’re you going to do for the mandatory yearly CCPD physical?”

“...panic,” Barry says. He’d forgotten about that particular requirement for being part of the CCPD, one that not even CSIs are exempt from. And it has to be a physical with a CCPD-approved physician, so he can’t just have Caitlin fake him a doctor’s note. 

“Say you have a medical condition,” Len suggests.

“A medical condition of _not having a heartbeat_?”

“Why not?” Len says, shrugging. “Your buddies at STAR Labs are scientists, right? They must’ve published something about your condition, however anonymized, and it would’ve been on your insurance forms – you _did_ submit insurance forms, right?”

Barry blinks. “I...don’t know? I mean, I assume so? I know Joe did at first, for sure; he’s still complaining-not-complaining about the medical debt and his new premiums being so high. I don’t know what happened after that, though.”

Len’s eyebrows go way up. “Wells didn’t charge you? Or, well, charge the insurance companies on your behalf?”

“I don't think so?” Barry says, shrugging. “He said it was charity, given his involvement in the Accelerator explosion...” He trails off, looking at the expression on Len’s face. “What?”

“Part of the reason I was so suspicious of you,” Len says slowly, “was because you were Dr. Wells’ only patient.”

“I – what? The only one? That can't be right. I thought I was just, you know, the only one _left_ -”

“No, you were the only one _at all_ ,” Len confirms. “For months after the Accelerator explosion, Wells didn’t do _anything_ else: he didn’t set up care clinics, he didn’t donate to rebuilding charities, nothing. Even fired most of the staff that wouldn’t quit, with only one or two exceptions, and then suddenly he takes you in – you, and no one else. It was so obviously fake that I assumed it had to be some sort of Family front.” 

Barry swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

“After we found out the connection between STAR Labs and the Flash, I assumed you were in on it, and then, when I learned more about you, that you were involved just to investigate it,” Len continues. “But the disappearances, the other speedster, that stuff – it all revolves around STAR Labs. All of it.” 

Barry can’t move.

The hints of bribery that Terri found to enable STAR Labs’ creation.

Hartley Rathaway’s accusations that the Accelerator explosion had been intentional.

The Accelerator’s creation of metahumans, including Barry.

Dr. Wells’ increasingly bizarre focus on Barry increasing his speed. 

The lack of any scientific method to their ‘tests’ meant to increase that speed. The lack of any publication, of any control tests, of anything that even vaguely resembled proper science. 

The way Wells got so angry when Barry skipped speed training to focus on any anything else, like his job. 

His lack of surprise when Barry’d broken the time barrier. 

Barry travelled through time – the biggest breakthrough in modern science! – and yet, no reaction, nothing but more encouragement to focus on going faster, faster, _faster_. 

As if time travel was an expected result.

How could Dr. Wells have known about the possibility time travel? 

How – unless, of course, Barry wasn’t the first speedster he’d met.

Now that Barry thinks about it, the very same day Barry started skipping training in favor of his job, the Man in Yellow appeared – and suddenly Barry was fully focused on training again.

The way Wells keeps mentioning Barry’s mom ever since then, like a goad to make Barry keep trying to get faster.

The way Wells seems to care less about Barry actually saving people and more about – more about the result.

The result, of course, being that Barry gets faster every time he fights a bad guy.

“Has Dr. Wells ever acted strangely in regards to you?” Len asks intently. He's clearly putting two and two together himself, getting the right number this time. He reaches out and puts a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “Does he ever seem like he’s keeping secrets? Like he has some sort of goal for you that might not be the goal he told you about?”

Barry nods mutely, his lips pressed together tight. 

“Tell me,” Len urges. “Tell me everything. We’ll deal with this – with him – we’ll take him down. Together.”

Barry puts his hand on Len’s.

Together.

That sounds good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about to head out on vacation for two weeks. I'm planning to continue posting, but in the event my internet access is limited, I'll resume updates when I return.


	15. 15

Len is not the sort of person that whistles while he works, but if he was, he would be whistling now. 

It's a good day.

A good week, even.

Oh, sure, they haven't figured out what the Families are up to yet, though they _have_ confirmed through interviews with the org crime unit and various C.I.s. that the other Families have also been unusually active recently, suggesting - however impossible it seems to be - that they were all involved in this still-unknown 'big day'. 

And, yes, the concept of any Family deal big enough to unite the Families is utterly terrifying, not least because Len isn't sure who he can trust with the information. He's brought Captain Singh in on it, both because Len is technically a guest at Singh's precinct and, more importantly, because Len does in fact actually trust Singh to be a decent policeman. Singh understood the ramifications immediately and vowed to do everything he could to help, but they've both agreed to gather more information privately before laying out the situation to anyone higher up (they have no hard evidence, and that weakens their case) or even sharing it outside a very limited group of trusted detectives.

Particularly in light of what happened to Len.

Len also informed Captain Singh of the events following his clash with the Flash, of course, in the interests of giving him the full context for what he overheard, and where, and why he was there in the first place. Singh's expression had been interesting to watch - pain, mostly, since Lloyd and Petersen were probably what Singh would've probably termed "good cops" - but Len made very clear to him that Len doesn't subscribe to the all-too-common Central City view that any cop who isn't on Family payroll is therefore "good" and not corrupt.

Lloyd and Petersen are perfect examples of that, for that matter: conspiring to murder another officer, however disliked and hated, is undoubtedly an act of corruption, but that form of corruption doesn't stem from the typical stinking pit that is Family money and influence. It stems from the belief that cops, particularly "good" cops, don't need to be held accountable for what they do the same way normal people do.

Len knows the way their thinking must have gone:

So Cichowski took bribes - definitely wrong, but did that mean he should go to prison for it, like any _civilian_ would? Surely not. He made a mistake taking a little Family cash, certainly, but it was just a mistake, nothing more; it was asking far too much of him to resist such a tempting offer _all_ the time, wasn't it? As long as he didn't do it routinely, then surely it wasn't _real_ corruption, right? Listen, the man made the highly commendable decision to become a cop, thereby risking his life to serve his city - in return, clearly he ought to be given far more deference and license to make such mistakes once in a blue moon, even though no such lenience would be given to any of the people of the city they were purportedly serving. 

(Ignoring, of course, the fact that corrupt cops are serving themselves rather than the city.)

And even Lloyd and Petersen themselves, planning a murder - they felt it was the right thing to do, even if it was illegal, so surely it couldn't be that bad, could it? After all, a cop's judgment was so much more important than little, unimportant things like the laws...

Singh hadn't liked hearing that. 

But not as much as he didn't like hearing Len point out that that sort of corruption, that the-boys-in-blue-are-better-than-you culture, is the sort that rots from the top down. The men and women of Singh's precinct thought they were untouchable as long as they were "good" - meaning, as long as they did the bare minimum of their jobs and didn't take Family bribes - and the reason they thought that was because that was the way things were run.

And who was responsible, one might ask, for the way things were run in a precinct?

At least Singh had the decency to come to terms with it at once and acknowledge his role in creating - or at least reinforcing and failing to dismantle - that culture: he offered Len his badge at once, stating his willingness to go to the Commissioner and resign, with the reasons explained publicly in order to start the process of rebuilding the department into a place with ethics and respect for the rule of law. Into a place that the community could truly trust.

Len refused Singh's offer.

That clearly came as a surprise, though the surprise lessened when Len explained his reasoning: the Families uniting into a single entity for any reason, no matter how temporary, represented a threat to Central City on an existential level far beyond even what corruption might accomplish, and as a result, taking them down had to be top priority, putting aside anything but the most egregious crimes.

"Though if I find a single cop in your precinct involved in anything more serious, I'm taking 'em down right away," Len warned Singh. 

"More serious than conspiring to murder a superior officer?" Singh asked, arching his eyebrows at Len.

Len snorted. "You know what I mean. The whole point is that I'm their superior officer, so I have the means to ensure that they're punished for what they've done; if not now, then at least later. Civilians, though, they can't do that, and especially not criminals. I hear anything, and I mean _anything_ , about one of your officers abusing their power to hurt someone in custody - and I don't give a damn how many priors that someone has - or to force something, whether by illegal searches or planting evidence, on someone in the street, and I will come down on them so hard they're going to think they forgot to evacuate ahead of a tornado."

Singh nodded, his face grim. "As it happens, I agree," he said. "Any abuse, any illicit searches or wrongfully obtained evidence, any officer-involved shootings, anything like that - you hit them as hard as you like, and I'll back you to the hilt. We need to make it crystal clear that following the laws is not even remotely optional for cops, even if that means tearing apart the whole department and starting again."

It was Len's turn to arch his eyebrows at Singh. "Singing a different tune now than you were before."

"I knew we'd gotten lax," Singh said. "But I thought it was lax on things like _paperwork_ \- cutting some little corners to try to pursue justice better, faster, getting people the answers they need and the safety they require, and I thought that was okay. I didn't realize we'd gotten so bad that two of my men would actively _plot a murder_ without realizing that it made them just as bad as the people they're trying to stop."

"Looking the other way on the cutting corners is how you get them there in the first place," Len told him. "You let someone start thinking some rights are small enough to be optional, sooner or later they'll get to thinking that the big ones are, too."

"Clearly," Singh said tersely. "So your plan is to defer my resignation until after we've gathered enough evidence of the situation involving the Families to present to the Commissioner?"

"No," Len said firmly. He'd been considering it, but Singh's speech was sincere enough to convince him otherwise. "I don't want you to resign at all - I want you to stay and help rebuild. Your own record is pretty much clean -"

One of the reasons Len chose this precinct as his temporary office, in fact.

"- and more than that, you're not wrong. Most of your detectives aren't bad guys; they're good cops, and we need good cops in Central, desperately. The problem's that the whole CCPD's been mired in this 'blue code' culture for so long that it's hard to tell which ones actually think they're doing the right thing and which ones are breaking and bending the rules for their own purposes. Our job'll be figuring that out, and you'll be better at doing that than me."

Singh nodded thoughtfully. "What about Lloyd and Petersen, though? A lot can get swept aside in a clean-up like you're planning, since we'll need to wipe at least a few slates clean, but - conspiring to murder's a bit much."

"Conspiring to murder in such a way that makes you vulnerable to Family blackmail," Len corrected him. "Much worse."

"I know this might be difficult for you to process, Snart," Singh said dryly. "But the law does consider 'murder' to be worse than corruption."

"Maybe in some places. In Central, corruption's the bigger problem."

"And yet, the law persists in its unreasonable prioritization of murder attempts. Well? What are you going to do about them?"

Len smirked.

He smirks now, too, in memory.

"Danvers," he says as she walks in. "Tell me."

"I offered, yet again, to get them a cup of coffee," she reports. "They declined, again, and continue to be convinced that you're intending to poison them."

Danvers' somewhat blood-thirsty smile might go some way towards explaining their new-found conviction. 

She hadn't exactly taken the news of Len's attempted murder well, by which Len means she's now even more ferociously protective of Len than she was before.

He's reminded her three times so far that she is _not_ legally allowed to avenge his death, should it happen, and she persists in replying only that in that case it would probably be for the best for everyone involved if he didn't die, then.

(He's touched. He’s semi-seriously worried that she's going to go to jail for murder in the first degree one day, but he's still sincerely touched.)

"Good," Len says. "Let 'em stew."

"Boss, we've gone past stewing," Danvers laughs. "We've got to be at least in the braising stage."

"You've been talking to Charlie, haven't you?"

She snorts inelegantly. "If he could offer me better tips about how to make them feel like the stupid jerks they are, I'd take them, but as it happens, no." She grins. "You're right, though. Being excessively nice to them and watching them torture themselves with their own paranoia about when you're going to bring the axe down on them is _almost_ good enough."

"You are a jealous and vengeful god, Danvers," Len tells her, not disapprovingly. "I told you, I promise I'll report them, just after we use their brand new shiny connections to the Families to give us a lead on this 'big day' we're dealing with."

"I'll hold you to that," Danvers says peacefully. "I know you, boss; it's amazing what you'll forgive if you're the only victim."

"They -"

"If you say something dumb like 'they were under a lot of emotional pressure' or 'they didn't actually succeed in murdering me', I'm putting a tracking bracelet on you for your own protection."

"I was going to say they'll get what they deserve at the appropriate time," Len lies. He might have been about to say one of those other things, but Danvers can't prove it. "Honestly, Danvers, between you and Barry, it'll get done; he's as rabid over it as you are."

She smirks. 

She's been smirking every time he says "Barry", but that's because she's a ridiculous romantic who thinks the fact that they're on a first-name basis and have decided that they're officially boyfriends is super cool.

Possibly because it is, in fact, super cool.

Len hasn't been this excited about a relationship in - ever.

"Shut up," he tells Danvers, smirking back at her in shared glee. "Get me Thawne and Iris."

"Will do. I'm amazed she's still talking to you, you know."

"I employ her," Len says dryly. "It helps."

After figuring out who exactly the Flash was, Len decided that since the Anti-Flash Task Force had already been constituted with such a vague mandate, not to mention filled with people he generally found trustworthy, that it made the most sense to just continue to operate on that basis. 

His first priority, though, was to get them all on the same page.

And that meant, at least unofficially, getting the Flash recognized as an agent of the law and giving his actions at least a veneer of legitimacy - albeit somewhat retrospectively.

"I'm an undercover cop?" Barry asked when Len explained. "You're making me an undercover cop?"

"Yep. You can't arrest people, and you should try to keep from breaking too many laws -" When possible, of course. Len used to be a thief for a living, after all. "- but since we don't want to let Wells know we're on to whatever he's up to, you can't be publicly associated with the department. And that means you're undercover."

"This is _awesome_."

"You need to unmask yourself to the current Anti-Flash Task Force so that they don't keep trying to take you down."

" _Not_ awesome! Your task force includes Singh, Eddie, and _Iris_ , remember?"

"Danvers, too, and of course I remember; they're my team," Len said patiently. "But no one is benefiting from your continued silence in this regard, least of all Iris. If you have a reason not to tell her that's better than 'I promised Joe West', I'll consider it not bringing her into the loop. Do you?"

"...it could put her in danger?"

"She's already on the task force; any danger she is or is not going to be in is going to arrive regardless of what she knows. Next?"

"...I really don't want to and as my boyfriend you're not going to make me?"

"Of course I'm not going to make you."

"I sense a 'but' here."

"Well, since you already sense it," Len said dryly. "I’m not going to make you tell her anything _but_ my team is getting the full Flash briefing tomorrow morning at 9AM. You're welcome to tell her first, or to be there to help explain things."

"But either way you're telling her with or without me?" Barry asked. He looked, if anything, relieved at the prospect of being forced to confess.

"Got it in one," Len affirmed.

And yet, despite all chances for a private confession, Barry ended up meekly sitting in the conference room when Len arrives a half-hour early.

“You’re early,” Len observed, more than a little bemused. As he well knows, Barry isn’t one for punctuality, not unless the world is ending.

“The world _is_ ending,” Barry said grimly when Len pointed that out. 

He’d brought coffee and donuts.

Sadly, they didn’t help him much.

“You – I – what – _Barry_?!” Iris yowled while Eddie just stared at Barry, mouth agape.

They were the only ones to be surprised, though. 

Singh - as Len distinctly started suspecting during the course of their earlier conversation - already knew and had for some time, so he took it calmly enough. 

(Danvers, oddly enough, appears to have already known as well - apparently she caught a glimpse of the Flash during their big battle on the street, matched the face with the Barry she’d snuck a peek at in the office, and intended on telling him afterwards, only to lose track of him in the ensuing chaos. The woman has seriously got x-ray vision, Len swears.)

The next few minutes were something of a kaleidoscope of emotion.

First, Iris was shocked (“ _You’re_ the Flash? You’re the _Flash_?!”).

Then she was relieved (“I knew you were hiding something; I just didn’t know what. I thought – something from the coma –”)

Then she was disappointed (“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”).

Then she was sad (“Don’t you trust me?”).

And then, at last – after Barry let slip in an effort to reassure her that he’d only not told her because West had made him promise not to – incandescently angry. 

“You _lied_ to me!”

“To be fair,” Len drawled, “to my understanding, he’d only been out of the coma, what, a few hours, not even one whole day, before West made him make that promise? And it’s pretty hard to feel like you’re betraying a promise, especially one to your father figure, even if you were in a vulnerable state when you made it –”

No, Len didn’t feel even the slightest bit bad about throwing Joe West under the bus.

It probably wouldn’t have worked as well as it did if Iris wasn’t already stewing over the whole thing with her brother Wally and her mother, but as it was –

Fireworks.

"I know you did that deliberately," Barry told him after Iris stormed out of Len's office. "Don't think I don't."

"Are you upset?"

"I, uh...listen, it's mean to do to Joe. He's really not that bad – you know, you should really add him to the task force team officially –"

"No chance in hell, but also not what I asked. You upset about it?"

Barry considered it, then shrugged. "The West family fights have always been epic and I'd _really_ rather not be in the middle. Anyway, I’m, like, 75% sure she said somewhere in there that she forgave me for not telling her!"

He beamed. 

The way Len remembered it, Iris said something along the lines of “you shouldn’t have let him convince you to lie to me but I know who the _real_ asshole that I won’t be forgiving for this is!”, but he was pretty sure that meant exactly what Barry thought it meant. 

Really, dumping this mess on Detective West's head, if it got Barry the absolution he'd so desperately longed for and lifted the weight of that unnecessary secret off Barry’s shoulders, and thus getting Len a chance to see that beautiful smile? 

Yeah, he’d do it that way any day.

"If you don’t mind,” Singh said dryly at that point, suddenly reminding everyone that the captain of the precinct is sitting among them, “I’m going to go make sure she doesn't blow anything up in the meantime.” 

By the time they got to the main floor, Iris was yelling, West was yelling back, and somehow they'd gotten off the subject of Barry – according to Danvers, West had apparently reacted to the initial accusation by trying to excuse his actions as being for Iris’ own good, which went over exactly as well as Len would have expected it to – and onto the subject of Francine and Wally.

Apparently, all of Iris’ plans about a reasonable and pre-planned confrontation went up in smoke the second West said, “You don’t know what’s the right thing for you sometimes.”

Len can’t really blame her.

Luckily for Len’s eardrums, Singh interrupted and sent them both home to go fight it out there instead.

(A short conversation with Singh later, Len did, begrudgingly, agree to bring West onto the team. The man already knew about Barry, after all; there was no point in keeping him out. Even though they would definitely need to have some serious words about cops that willingly worked with known vigilantes without bringing them in...)

After that, Barry lets himself get talked into doing some work up in his lab lest he mope for the few hours it took Iris to finish fighting with West and return, but when she finally did return, she was no longer quite as angry.

“I’m not talking to Dad,” she informed Barry, giving him a hug. “At all. Zilch. If you promise me you won’t mention me to him at all for the next few days, I will trade you total absolution and forgiveness.”

“I won’t even remember your name when he’s in the area,” Barry promised. “Hey, who’s this girl, why’s she here –”

Iris laughed.

“So – we’re okay?”

“Oh, we’re better than okay, Mr. Allen,” Iris said, grinning. “We are going to go through the backlog of my blog and you’re going to tell me the story behind _every last incident_ –”

Barry wailed dramatically as she drags him off, but he was clearly enjoying himself

It was really nice to see them getting along again. Gave Len hope that if Barry could get absolution, then Mick -

Len is not thinking about Mick.

Nope.

Len is high on new relationship vibes of goodness and he's not letting any thoughts into his head that might disrupt that. He's giving himself a small vacation from despair. He deserves it.

Besides, the end result of the whole thing is that Iris took some time away from the precinct to cool off – forgiveness or not, she’s still a little upset about the ease by which Barry lied to her – which in turn meant that Barry ends up using the spaces in his daily schedule that he’d previously used to hang out with Iris to come visit Len instead. 

Len doesn’t mind that at all. Even the torture and tedium of routine PT are a lot more fun with a solicitous boyfriend willing to run and get him his favorite pizza as a reward.

(It’s actually kind of funny – despite Len knowing that there has to be a Salieri’s pizza shop around the precinct office somewhere, since Danvers gets pick-up from it on the regular, Barry can’t seem to find it for the life of him. He swears that the only place to get it is the original location in the slums, which he can only get to in time due to his super-speed, while Danvers just smirks and refuses to divulge her sources. She's stubborn like that. But pizza or no, seeing Barry around is a surefire way to brighten Len’s day.)

Sure, Barry can't be there all the time - he's got his regular CSI work that Len doesn't want to interfere with, and of course keeping up with his speed training so that Wells doesn't get suspicious, and recently Barry also mentioned something about having some luck convincing Cisco about Wells because of some sort of time travel aberration where Wells apparently killed Cisco in a future that never happened...

Yeah, Len's not touching that last one with a ten foot pole. He's already made Barry swear never to use his time travel thing for anything less than a city-wide apocalypse - nothing personal, nothing stupid, and _certainly_ not to fix an argument or something stupid like that.

Barry actually protested that the first time Len brought it up.

Well, not the “no time travel to redo an argument” point – they've both seen Buffy, and they've already had the whole discussion about how Willow's behavior leading up to the Tabula Rasa episode is unbelievably unethical – but he argued that there might be some reasons that justify it, like death of a loved one. 

Len put a stop to that line of thought right there and then.

(If he starts thinking of letting Barry change history to fix lives, then he'll ask him to fix time to save Mick. He wouldn't be able to resist. And then they'd probably never meet and Barry would still be under Wells' influence and -)

Barry got the picture.

They still hadn't entirely agreed - especially since Barry wasn't even certain that he could go back more than a day or so, rendering the problem somewhat moot as even Len has trouble objecting to a very small and limited reset to keep someone important from dying or something - but Len at least managed to extract a promise from Barry that he wouldn't do any time travel without checking in with Len or Iris first as to the wisdom of the action in question, which Len supposes is the most he can reasonably ask for. 

But that's as much thinking about time travel as Len wants to do. If Cisco's future-doppelgänger-self got murdered by Wells in such a way that Cisco somehow retained the memory of that murder, thereby causing him to doubt his relationship with Wells, that's his business. 

Though apparently the (unspecified to Len) method of murder apparently raises the intriguing possibility that Wells himself might _be_ the second speedster, and thereby the man who murdered Barry's mother, rather than merely employing him.

"We’re not sure if he is, though," Barry said when Len asked, gnawing at his lip. “Cisco admits that he doesn’t really remember what happened, not exactly, so it's still possible that he's just someone working as Wells’ agent. But if Cisco is right – Wells might be the Reverse Flash.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Bad enough being manipulated by a mentor, but...yeah. If Wells is the one who killed my mom and framed my dad, we need to get a confession out of him.”

"Wells or not Wells, the most important thing is that we stop the Reverse Flash at all costs before he hurts more people," Len corrected. "If we can get a confession, that’d be great. But if we can't, we can still use the fact he exists to create enough reasonable doubt due to previously unknown circumstances to get your father released."

Len got very satisfactorily kissed for that. That'd been fun...

"Boss!"

Len snaps out of his daydream. "Yes, Danvers?"

"Iris and Eddie are here," she says, looking amused. "Since we’re seeing them separately from the rest of the team the last few days –” Meaning West, mostly. Poor Eddie keeps having to split his time between his girlfriend and his partner, since they aren’t talking. “– I figured you’d want to talk to them first. Shall I show them in?"

"Yes, do," he says. "I want to hear how far they've gotten on Wells' Family connections."

The answer, unfortunately, is not far at all.

"His records are creepily perfect," Iris says, pacing the room. "Like - _creepily_ perfect. We're talking, the guy has never so much as made a typo in anything, and his signature is picture-perfect identical on every page. It's like all his paperwork was done by a robot!"

"Does that help us?" Len inquires.

"Probably not," Thawne says reluctantly. "There's no hard evidence Wells has ever even seen a Family member, much less a financial connection between them -"

"There's what Barry's friend Terri found," Iris objects.

"We haven't connected that shell company to Wells, though," Eddie protests.

"Shell company?"

"Yeah!" Iris says enthusiastically. "Our one lead!"

"Hardly even that, really," Thawne qualifies. "We've identified one company that handled a large part of the contracting for STAR Labs' construction - Zoom Contracting - but their financials are ridiculously bizarre."

"They supposedly constructed the entire inner ring of STAR Labs in less than _three weeks_ ," Iris says. "And _supposedly_ they incurred no costs for doing it beyond the raw materials needed for the work – though of course they got paid hand over fist for it all."

"That sounds like fairly routine graft to me," Len says. "What's the lead?"

"We haven’t found any other clients who acknowledge having worked with them or any other projects that they’re associated with on any construction approvals, but they regularly receive extremely high payments from – somewhere," Iris says. "Somewhere unknown. We managed to work that out between my hunches, Terri's forensic accounting wizardry and Kara's _ridiculously_ fast archival research - seriously, girl, you're not also a superspeedster metahuman, right?"

"Nope," Danvers says. "I'm a different species entirely."

"Iris' theory," Thawne, blessedly practical, interjects, "is that if Wells really is the speedster in yellow, he theoretically could have done a lot of the construction personally, thereby avoiding outlay on labor costs and resulting in an extremely fast deliverable. And if he did it personally and Zoom Contracting is just a front, then the additional 'client' payments could be how the Families are paying him for the hits. It's pretty tenuous."

"Good enough start for me, though," Len says. "You're authorized to keep digging, all of you. Just remember -"

"People who look into STAR Labs or Wells have a tendency to disappear," Iris says. "We know. We're being careful."

"Good. Out, all of you; I've got my own mission for today."

"I'm sure you do," Danvers says with a grin. "Have fun, and don't strain that side of yours by going too quickly."

Thawne snorts.

Everyone looks at him and he flushes. "I just – too _quickly_ – never mind."

"No, it was a good one," Len allows magnanimously. "Good luck on your investigation. Get back to me when you have results."

Thawne leaves, escorted by Danvers.

Iris, however, lingers behind, standing by the door.

Len arches his eyes at her, and she smiles ruefully.

"I'm guessing we can both take the shovel talk as said, right?" she asks.

"We can," Len agrees. He'd expected something like this. "I have no intention of breaking Barry's heart."

"Good," Iris says, but she hesitates. "But...Barry - okay, you know how he didn't tell me about the Flash thing?"

"Oddly enough, having been there when you found out about it – yes, I'm familiar."

"Yeah, yeah, that’s not the point I’m getting at here. Stop being snarky for two minutes. The point is - I love Barry. He’s my best friend. He always will be. But – he lies. A lot. Mostly to get out of confrontations, but sometimes he just forgets to mention things because he subconsciously realizes people might get angry at him if he tells them." She shakes her head. "And based on what I know about you so far, you take people not being straight with you pretty seriously."

Len frowns. "Are you...warning _me_ about getting _my_ heart broken? By _Barry_?"

"I mean, yeah, I guess, sort of? Again, while this is based on a pretty limited acquaintance with you, I think you're a pretty upstanding guy, former thief or no thief," Iris says, crossing her arms. "For all your jokes, you really care about ethics and being a good person and all that. If things blow up, well...I just wanted to say that, Barry or no Barry, best friend or no best friend, come tell me your side of the story and I'll be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Okay?”

Len is gaping at her.

“Listen, like I said, Barry's my best friend, but I _know_ him. I know him and I know you, and...I don't know. You're pretty lonely, and you don't deserve to be." Iris shrugs. "Break his heart, I'll break you. But if you two break up..." 

She trails off, frowning.

"Too many 'break's in that sentence?"

"Yeah. Anyway, you get the gist."

And then she slips out the door before Len really has time to react to what she just said.

He's not exactly sure what to do with it. He supposes he appreciates the faith she has in him, and acknowledges that as Barry's Mick she would have the most insight into Barry's character, but...really? 

Now that he's gotten to know Barry, Len can't imagine what in the world would be bad enough to cause the sort of break up blow up Iris is describing. Besides, he knows about the Flash thing - what else is it going to be? Barry's not-so-secret supernatural blog that he's _totally_ still updating?

Weird.

Len supposes he'll just take the compliment.

In the meantime, he has a date.

He timed his meeting to end exactly 25 minutes after the meeting time Barry proposed, so it's no surprise when Barry appears in his office only seven minutes later, looking flustered and embarrassed. "Uh, hi - I didn't mean -"

"Good timing. I just finished work," Len says, not without fondness. "It ran long."

Barry looks relieved for a moment, then suspicious. "Did you _deliberately_ let it run long?"

"Of course I did. I've met you."

Barry laughs, looking delighted. "Okay, c'mon, I left the car outside -"

"No, wait, don't -"

They're in the car.

Len bends double in agony as his side and back and leg scream protest at the abrupt change in position. The fact that Barry has managed to make the actual running part of events so sudden as to barely be consciously noticed doesn't really matter; his body still knows it happened, even if his mind doesn't. 

"Barry," he says through gritted teeth. "I ain't wearing my braces. That hurt."

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean -"

"We'll talk about your evolving definition of consent later. Go get my crutches."

Barry reappears a second later, looking embarrassed. Luckily, Len's managed to take a few deep breaths and shove down the pain again. "Thanks."

"Sorry," Barry says again. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know," Len says. "And one of these days I'll be fully healed and you'll have permission to run me around as you like, but until then, a bit of caution wouldn't go amiss."

"Yeah, you're right...what was that about consent? I mean, I wouldn't, uh, you know -"

"Not _sexual_ consent," Len says, rolling his eyes. "You're fine on _that_. Just regular normal consent, asking for permission, that sort of kindergarten stuff. The fact that you tell me you're gonna run me doesn't mean you don't have to wait for me to say 'okay' before you do run me. Emergency cases of rescuing life and limb excepted, of course."

"Got it," Barry says, still looking embarrassed. "Sorry."

Len waves a hand, dismissing it. "Now," he says, settling himself more comfortably into the car. "We estimate Lloyd and Petersen won't be coming out for another seventeen minutes, twenty three seconds, right?"

"That's right."

"Well, then," Len says. "Maybe we _should_ talk about your sexual ethics -"

Barry knows Len well enough by now to laugh and take that as a cue to lean over and kiss him.

Seventeen minutes later, their targets exit, right on time, and Len gently (and reluctantly) pushes Barry away.

"Great," Barry says, focusing on the extremely paranoid looking pair. "Let's follow them."

"Be a little obvious about it," Len advises. 

“A little _obvious_?”

"They’re cops; there’s no way you can drive well enough for them not to notice you. So we want to be obvious instead - not too much, just enough that they see a black car with tinted windows and think 'Family'."

Barry grins.

They follow Lloyd and Petersen for a while, pausing occasionally to make out as the two cops make their general rounds throughout town. Len’s been following them for a few days, mostly with Danvers or sometimes Wally to drive him – they haven’t yet figured out where they're meeting with the Families, or even if they are, but in Len’s opinion, following them around and heightening their paranoia is fun regardless of how productive it is.

Stalking people together while on a date with Barry is even _more_ fun.

“Hey,” Barry says at their fourth stop instead of trying to wiggle into Len’s lap like he has the last three stops. “That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” Len asks, looking around. It’s a slum corner, not unlike most slum corners – a crummy office building, a shady-looking bodega, a run-down set of apartments. Nothing special.

“No, I know this building,” Barry says, squinting at the office building Lloyd and Petersen entered a few minutes ago. “This is where Dibny’s office is.”

“Dibny?”

“Yeah, you know, Ralph Dibny, the one I told you about. The cop – well, he used to be a cop – the one who planted evidence?”

Len’s eyebrows go up. “And he’s working in the slums now? As what?”

“Private investigator, apparently. His building did have a Family problem, though; I saw some when I went to visit him.” Len arches his eyebrows, causing Barry to flush a bit. “I was having a bit of a moral crisis and wanted to remind myself what not to do. Ultimately not an issue.”

Sounds like an issue, but sure, Len’s willing to take this one on faith. He nods. “Family problem, huh? Which Family?”

“Santinis.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Not a Santini area, usually. Interesting. Did Dibny say that he stayed in touch with anyone from the precinct?”

“Yeah,” Barry says. “He said some of them threw him work when they could, on account of their friendship and empathy and stuff. Including some of the cops known to be in the Family pocket. Do you think…?”

“That Dibny’s acting as some sort of go-between? It’s possible,” Len says. “It’s as good a theory as any, anyway, though of course we’ll have to see who else is in that building –”

Barry’s gone.

And now he’s back.

“They’re on Dibny’s floor,” he reports. “No idea if they’re going to see him specifically, though; I didn’t stick around for fear they’d see me.”

Len snorts. “Well, that works. Now we just need to know what’s on that floor - which we can do another time,” he adds, catching Barry’s arm before he disappears again. “Hold off.”

“Okay,” Barry says, then grins. “Back to what we were otherwise doing?”

Well. If Barry _insists_...

The rest of the ride goes pretty much without incident, and Barry promises to get West onto the Dibny connection since West is technically on the task force team now, as Len promised. 

Unfortunately, West’s still pretty bitter about Len’s existence, not to mention the fact that Len and Barry are openly dating – Len got bored and hobbled off about three minutes into West’s shovel talk, both because he believes respect is earned, not given, and because he wanted to ensure West’s oblique references to his service weapon remained oblique and didn’t turn into actual threats that would potentially get West in trouble – so Len’s been delivering actual instructions through Barry for the time being in the hopes that if West thinks it’s Barry’s idea, he’ll actually do the work he’s been told to do. 

(Purposefully malingering because you don’t like a guy is not corruption; it’s just being an asshole. Though if West says one more thing about Barry banging a supervillain…) 

A few more kisses later, Len starts making his hobbling way back towards his office even as Barry disappears in a flash of light.

Heh.

_Flash_ of light.

It’s never going to get old.

Len’s about halfway there when his phone buzzes with a text from Charlie. 

_Got some1 wants 2 meet u. Has ur card._

Len’s eyebrows go up. His _card_? As in, his almost-never-used brand-new business cards that actually admit that he’s a cop? Who the hell would have that?

_Doesn’t want 2 meet at ur office. Jitters in 5?_

_Make it 10_ , Len texts back, sighing. He sends a text notifying Danvers of his changed plans so she doesn’t start a search party when he doesn’t arrive at the office and changes direction.

When he gets to Jitters, he sees Charlie hovering by a booth in the back, smiling at a twink.

Len makes his way forward. “No,” he says. “Just – no. Bad Charlie.”

Charlie pouts at him, but shrugs. “Another time, maybe,” he tells the twink – brown eyes, brown hair, pouty lips aside, and Len really shouldn’t be mentally nicknaming him ‘the twink’ since this is probably his contact but it’s really hard not to – and meanders off.

“Tell me,” the twink says in a surprisingly upper-class sort of accent that doesn’t really match the faded green hoodie he’s pulled up in a vague attempt to hide his face. Or possibly it’s those hearing aids he’s not-so-subtly trying to hide, who knows. “When he says he’d like to _eat_ me, does he mean –”

“S’got priors for attempted cannibalism. I wouldn’t go for it if I were you.”

“Ah. Right. I see.” The guy lets his eyes drift across Len’s body. “I don’t suppose –”

“Not a chance.” Len settles himself down across from the guy. “You wanted to see me?”

The guy produces what is, in fact, Len’s card. “I think it’s more like _you_ wanted to see _me_ ,” he says, tilting his head back in an arrogant sort of way. “I found your card in my – temporary living quarters, let’s say, with a note indicating that you wanted to discuss what I learned during my tenure at STAR Labs.”

Tenure at STAR Labs –

Ah, yes.

The now-missing Mark Mardon’s surprising choice in roommates. 

“So you're Hartley Rathaway, I’m guessing?” Len says. 

“That’s correct,” Rathaway says. “I also hear that you’re the man in charge of investigating the Flash. The Anti-Flash Task Force, I believe?”

Stupid nickname.

“I’m associated with a task force dedicated to looking into unusual events in Central City,” Len hedges. “And yeah, I’m currently investigating STAR Labs, including your claims of misconduct prior to the Accelerator explosion. Anything you’d be willing to tell me, I’d appreciate hearing.”

Rathaway’s nose wrinkles a bit when he hears Len’s lower-class accent in full force. It’s not Len’s fault it goes particularly nasal around longer, more unfamiliar words, but the reaction does make Len not particularly fond of the young Rathaway, no matter how much sympathy he has for anyone who got kicked out of their family for being something other than straight.

Guess you can take the money away from the rich kid, but it doesn’t make him any less of a spoiled brat…

“I do have information about the Accelerator explosion, which I’ll be more than happy to share with you,” Rathaway says, clearly deciding to ignore Len’s obviously less-than-privileged origins in favor of the opportunity to tell his story to a willing ear. “Despite the fact that my earlier complaints were so rudely brushed off by the police.”

“Well, I ain’t the regular police,” Len says. 

“I also,” Rathaway says, then pauses, clearly for effect, “have information regarding the illicit activity of the Flash himself.”

Oh, boy.

“We’re largely dropping that angle of our investigation,” Len tells him. “While we’re very concerned with illegality _around_ the Flash, we largely believe him to be acting in good faith.”

Rathaway sneers. “Good faith? The _Flash_?”

“That’s correct,” Len says, a little stiffly. “His decision to take on crime-fighting on his own account without coordination with the proper authority might be over-enthusiastic, but we have reason to believe he’s honestly trying to help people.”

“Oh, I’m sure he thinks he is,” Rathaway says, still sneering. “I assume the little secret prison he’s running is _also_ considered to be ‘in good faith’?”

Len freezes.

Secret prison? 

(He’s trapped in a small dark room, an unfamiliar claustrophobia seizing his heart as he thinks to himself that he’s going to die in this room, this prison with the Families guarding the door so that they can come in and hurt him whenever they feel like it before coming to kill him at last when they get bored of him, he’s going to die in this modern-day oubliette where people are put to be forgotten, this terrible place where no one will ever find him, his death ignored, and only Mick and Lisa left to mourn and wonder...)

The Flash – Barry – _his_ Barry – is involved with a secret prison?

Len’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know.

But there’s no sound of a lie in Rathaway’s voice, and Len - Len's a cop. He picked that job years ago, the job and all the responsibilities that came with it, and that means his duty, first and foremost, is to justice. It’s the mission he’s devoted his life to; the one principle he holds above everything; the thing that drove him through undercover work all those years, the thing that led him to the work he does now. 

The basis for everything he does, the most fundamental of his beliefs: that the pursuit of justice is the utmost duty of every cop, no matter the personal cost. 

If Len closes his eyes to something bad just because he’s pretty sure it’s going to ruin everything good that he has? 

Well. That would makes him no better than the corrupt self-interested cops that he hates so much.

No better than his dad.

So even if Len desperately doesn’t want to know – he has no choice.

He has to know the truth.

“You know, I ain’t too sure about that,” he says, very slowly. “Why don’t you tell me all about it, and I’ll see what I think?”


	16. 16

"So the plan for today is to search STAR Labs, right?" Barry asks, mentally reviewing his calendar. 

"That's right," Cisco says, tossing his pencil up into the air a bit too high and fumbling the catch. "Wells is taking that video conference call from home today, the long one, and it should take him all morning. I've dialed into it myself to make sure he's still on the call and repositioned some satellites with infrared detection in his direction to make sure it's actually, y'know, him and not like a hologram or something. I'll be monitoring it all from here." He makes a face. "Now I can listen to him talk to the accountants."

"I'm glad I don't have to do that," Joe remarks, slouching against one of the computer desk. "No offense, Cisco, but that sounds boring as hell."

"It is, but I can play video games at the same time," Cisco tells him. "The joy of multiple screens."

Joe shakes his head mournfully, clearly despairing of this new generation.

"Give up, Cisco," Caitlin teases. "He's never going to appreciate your technology."

"Joe, you've started looking into the Dibny thing I told you about yesterday, right?" Barry asks, ignoring their interplay. He's charged up with energy today - the speed training, whatever Wells' goal with it, is definitely working, and ever since things have gone well with Len...

The phrase 'walking on air' comes to mind.

Barry's having to make an effort to ensure he doesn't accidentally walk on air, _literally_. 

"Yeah, yeah," Joe says. "I asked a few guys over in Vice to check out what Dibny's up to; they've promised to get back to me later today, maybe tomorrow. Y'know, I'm still not sure it isn't just your old grudge against the guy coming up again, but since you got Cold's authorization for the search, it's _probably_ still worth checking out."

Joe's voice has gone bitter. Again.

Barry scowls at him. "Joe, we've talked about this. Yes, we're dating. No, this isn't some sort of 'secret plan' to get at us; he's a good cop and he wants to do the right thing, and the right thing right now is taking down the Man in Yellow –”

“Reverse Flash,” Cisco interjects.

“– and he’s helping us with that. And you can stop hinting that he's only agreeing to look into Dibny because I'm dating him _any_ time now!"

"I wasn't saying that!"

"It was implied," Caitlin says. "Heavily."

"And you did kinda do the same thing to Iris and Eddie Thawne when they first started dating," Cisco points out meekly.

Joe crosses his arms and scowls.

"Why don't we focus on our search of STAR Labs?" Cisco hastily suggests in an obvious bid to change the subject. "Thanks to Iris' digging, we've managed to map out the parts of the Accelerator built by Zoom Contracting, and thus probably by the Reverse Flash; if he hid something inside of STAR Labs, it's probably there. Barry, you ready?"

"Sure am," Barry says. "Let's start with -"

A door slams in the hallway and they all freeze.

"Wells?" Joe asks, his hand automatically dropping to his belt.

Cisco squints at his screen. "No, he's still on the call - he's even talking. Can’t be him."

"Then who -?"

Another door, and then the off-beat echo of footsteps, accompanied by a heavy thump every few seconds.

Barry knows that thumping walk quiet well, though the individual responsible has never been to STAR Labs before.

"Len..?"

Len comes through the door. 

Barry is already stepping forward, starting to smile automatically at the sight of his boyfriend despite being unsure of what brings him to STAR Labs unannounced, but Len's expression - bloodless lips pressed tightly together, face tight and pale with rage, jaw clenched - makes him pause, as does Kara following him close behind, an extremely worried expression on her face. 

"Len?" he asks, smile fading, replaced with worry. "What's wrong? What's happened? Is everyone okay?"

"Where are they?" Len demands, ignoring Barry’s questions. "Where have you put them?"

His voice is harsh, though it remains as cold as ever. 

If Barry didn’t know him, he’d think Len was angry, but not furious; he’d think he was indifferent and coldly disapproving – but Barry _does_ know Len. He’s seen him talk about Mick. He knows the overwhelming coldness that swallows Len up when he’s been ripped apart inside, the agony of pain and betrayal that he tries and fails to hide behind a layer of icy fury. 

Len is unbelievably angry right now.

“Put who?” Barry asks, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Who are you talking about? Who’s ‘them’?”

“The people,” Len snarls. “The ones with powers! Your _victims_!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cisco says. “ _Victims_? What the hell are you talking about?”

“That seems kind of uncalled for,” Caitlin says.

“Uncalled for?” Len says. “ _Uncalled for?_ ” 

He grits his teeth, obviously trying to rein in his temper enough to even speak.

Barry tries to look at Kara to see if something has happened, some meta similar to Bivolo affecting Len’s emotional state or something happening with Mick, but she’s refusing to meet his eyes. 

Bad sign.

“Okay,” Len says after a moment, his voice even more controlled now. His hands are clenching so hard on his crutches that his knuckles have gone white; he’s clearly not actually calmed down at all. “Okay, let me rephrase and put this in a way that you people might understand –” 

This does not bode well.

“– please tell me, without delay, where you people put the _human beings_ – entitled to all human rights under international law – that are, just to add insult to injury, also _United States citizens_ – with all the rights that entails under our legal system – that you _fucking assholes_ assaulted, kidnapped, and illegally imprisoned?”

Oh _shit_.

“You know,” Len adds scathingly. “The ones you all didn’t tell me about?”

Barry’s brain just – freezes.

He’s gotten used to his mind moving faster than most people's, after the Accelerator, and even when he’s had his mind crash before, it was because he was thinking too many things at once.

Not now.

Complete stop.

Complete blank.

“Uh,” Cisco squeaks. “You – mean the metas?”

“Yeah,” Len says. “I mean the metas. You remember them, I hope? The ones that Barry here knocked out on the streets of Central City – battery, assault, maybe grievous bodily harm, I don’t know –”

No.

“ – and then moved without their consent – just so you know, legally we call that ‘kidnapping’ or ‘human trafficking’, take your pick –”

_No._

“– in order to put in a secluded area in which they weren’t allowed to leave, aka, unlawful imprisonment. Do you want me to cite legal provisions at you? I can do that.”

_No!_

“It’s not like that,” Joe protests. “You don’t understand –”

“Oh, I understand all right,” Len cuts him off. “You – all of you – you think you’re judge, jury, and executioner all at once. Who needs the laws, huh? Who needs rights when some random civilians think they can do it all themselves – this is just like I _thought_ it would be, right from the start –”

“It’s not like that!” Barry exclaims, finally regaining his voice.

Len finally looks at Barry. His expression is hard, but his eyes reflect the light – he’s got suppressed tears in his eyes. This is not easy for him; this is hurting him.

“Yes, Barry,” he says, and his voice is even a little gentle, just for Barry, when for anyone else it would stay sharp and unyielding. “It is like that. It’s exactly like that. You’re a CSI. You work for the CCPD. You took the same oath every cop takes, to uphold the laws and protect the people. You, you of _all people_ , should know exactly how important it is to protect the right to a free and fair trial where you can defend yourself. And you still...you still took that right away from these people.”

Barry’s breath catches in his throat.

Len’s right.

Len’s _right_. 

Len, who cares so much about corruption – 

Who feels personally betrayed by those who swore to respect the rule of law and then don’t – 

Whose father was a dirty cop, whose life was ruined by a dirty cop, whose partner was nearly killed by a dirty cop – 

Who confessed one day when it was just the two of them, curled together on a park bench, that he liked Barry from the very beginning, liked him a lot, but just couldn’t bring himself to _trust_ that Barry really meant well – and how much it meant to him to find out that Barry wasn’t like that –

And now this.

The metas.

The metas they’d put away.

The disappearances that Len thought the Flash was responsible for – they weren’t all Family hits or related to STAR Labs, after all. Terri had had three piles of disappearances, after all: Family-related, STAR Labs-related…and Flash-related.

Len was so happy when he discovered that Barry wasn’t behind the disappearances.

But he _was_.

Kyle Nimbus. Jake Simmons. Tony Woodward. Shawna Baez. Mark Mardon.

Those disappearances?

They’re all him.

And Barry didn’t tell Len about them.

Oh, he never made a conscious decision to omit the information from what he told Len or to deliberately try to hide it. He was just so focused on how removing those names from the list of disappearances revealed things about their investigation, on how that narrowed-down list showed that Wells was up to something related to the Families, on how this new information got them a step closer to the answers, he never even thought about what it meant. 

It never occurred to him to mention that those disappearances weren’t really disappearances; that he knew where they were; that he knew what had happened to them.

It wasn’t a deliberate deception at all.

Barry just forgot about them. 

He’s pretty sure Len will think that that’s worse.

“It’s not like what happened with Barry’s dad at all,” Joe interjects, trying to salvage the unsalvageable. He takes a step forward, glaring at Len; he never liked Len, and undoubtedly sees this as yet another instance of that dislike, rather than the reckoning it really is. “These metas were committing crimes and harming people –”

“Even criminals have rights, Detective West,” Len snaps. The gentleness in his voice is gone. “All people do. The right to a fair trial. The right to a proper arrest. Or are you telling me that Barry here – who, let me remind you, is a private citizen, _not even a cop_ , and thus not authorized to even arrest anybody – Miranda’d all the metas before taking them in?”

“I –”

“No, please, tell me, _Detective_ West! I’m dying to know! Did you read ‘em their rights? Did you process their arrest in a public database according to the law? Did you give ‘em access to a lawyer? A judge? A call to family? Can they invoke the right of habeas corpus? Can they sue you for unlawful arrest if you messed up any part of that process?” 

Len takes a step forward, leaning even more heavily than usual on his crutch. His eyes are boring into Joe’s, but his words are aimed at all of them. 

“And what about the conditions once they’re captured, huh?” he continues. “They get their three hots and a cot, one hour of mandated physical activity, the right to company, conjugals, regular contact with friends and family? Or bail, huh, how about bail? Who decided they couldn’t be bailed out? That’s a judicial decision, and for some reason, I’m suspecting that none of you are sworn judges!”

Joe’s mouth moves, but he doesn’t say anything.

There’s nothing he can say.

“Especially you, Detective West,” Len continues, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You’re not a judge. But you _are_ a cop. Sworn to uphold the law. Except you didn’t, did you?”

Joe still says nothing.

Barry can’t blame him. 

It’s not just Joe, after all. Barry took the same oaths, made the same vows, promised himself he was doing the right thing.

And he wasn’t. 

Len’s mouth twists. “No, you didn’t. You did the same thing every goddamn corrupt cop in the city did, thinking that what you think is right is more important than the laws.”

“I was trying my best to protect the people of Central City,” Joe says woodenly.

“Guess what, Detective? The ‘people’ you think you’re protecting _include_ the people you’re abusing – yes, I said abuse!” Len says, holding up a hand to cut off Joe’s protest. “And I _mean_ abuse! This is precedent, West; if you can decide to imprison someone without their rights, why can’t everyone else?” 

“I saw them commit crimes!” Joe says. “I saw them, we _all_ saw them! They’re not innocent! We _know_ they’re not innocent!”

“It doesn’t _matter_ if they’re innocent or not innocent! Even fucking serial killers that get caught _red-handed_ get the chance to defend themselves in court!” Len exclaims, his voice starting to rise as his rage begins to escape even his icy self-control. “It doesn’t matter if they’re standing on a mountain of the corpses of their victims that you just saw them murder right before your eyes! You’re just a cop! You don’t get to decide ‘oh what the hell, they’re evil, I’ll just shoot them’, not if you have the option of taking them in peacefully – and if you do, you deserve to be fired and go to jail for manslaughter. But you _certainly_ don’t get to decide that they don’t get to be arrested according to procedure. You don’t get to decide that they don’t get the right to have a trial, a lawyer, anything. You don’t get to lock them away and throw away the key!”

Joe bows his head.

“And you _know_ that! You’re a cop; you can’t say you didn’t know. You knew they had rights, you knew what they were entitled to, and you just decided to do it anyway,” Len continues. “You decided to ignore every single damn thing that society says that all people, even criminals known to be guilty, deserve! You locked these people up without telling anyone like - like they were fucking stray dogs! You took their _rights_ away from them! And for _what_? What possible reason could justify that?”

He takes a limping step forward. 

“It can’t be just because you saw them committing a crime,” he says. “You’re a detective; if you started kidnapping everyone who ever committed a crime in front of you, this place would be overflowing. So no, it’s not that. That’s not what made you feel you could do this.”

Another step forward.

“Having powers, is that it? Is _that_ what makes these people different? That must be it. But you don’t get to make that decision – and you know why? Because like every corrupt asshole in the book, you won’t apply it equally. You’ll say it’s okay to do all this to one person, but not another, and why? Because you think you’re able to make that judgment call. You. Just you. Because you’re above the law. And that’s what corruption _is_.”

Another.

“We’re all supposed to be equal under the law, Detective West. I’ll be the first to admit there’s a shit ton of inequality baked in there, with poor people and minorities getting the short end of the stick, but at least they’re the laws we’ve all agreed we’re following. At least we all know what to expect. Being kidnapped at superspeed and locked away without a trial? Ain’t _no one_ expecting that.”

Len looks around the room. 

“All of you,” he says. “So self-righteous, ain’t you? Thinking you’re doing the right thing.”

He shakes his head.

“Tell me,” he says, “think any of you’d object if I took Barry here and put him in a hole, never letting him talk to any of you ever again, leaving you wondering what happened to him? You would, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. He’s your friend. But why is he any different from all the rest of 'em? He’s got powers, too! You’ve seen him commit crimes, too! By your logic, you ought to treat him just the way you treat the rest of them! All of you - you’re no better than those monsters that keep girls in their basements!”

“But it _is_ different! You don’t understand; these metas are dangerous!” Cisco blurts out, unable to suppress his dismay anymore. “We didn’t have a choice; we _had_ to put them in the Accelerator! With their powers, there’s no way the cells at Iron Heights can hold them –” 

“Iron Heights isn’t the only goddamn prison out there! If you hadn’t all been so obsessed with keeping Barry’s identity a secret – with keeping _all of this_ a secret, putting the public and your fellow cops in greater danger because they went into the field not even knowing that they didn’t know what they were facing – you could have _just told the CCPD about it_!” 

Len mimics holding a phone up to his ear. “Ring ring, hey, guess what, I’m reporting a crime, and hey I managed to stop it from happening but it turns out the perp appears to have unusual powers that probably won’t be contained by Iron Heights’ normal cells. Luckily, by chance, I happen to have a place that _will_ hold them securely; do you want to use it while still granting them due process?” 

He drops his hand back to his side, his face twisted in disgust. “Guess that was just too fucking hard for you guys, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t…you don’t…Wells said –” Caitlin says, her voice wavering.

“Oh, Wells, yeah, _Wells_ ,” Len says. “Let's talk about Wells. How _convenient_ , of course, it’s all Wells’ idea. Sure it was. You know what, let’s even say it really was his idea, whole and entire, and none of you had anything to do with it. _Who cares?_ Unless the guy is carting around an idiocy field that reduces the brain function of anyone within twenty feet of him, you’re all adults! Rational, thinking adults! How could you permit this?! How could you not try to stop it the second you realized what was going on?”

Barry’s breath is coming hard and his brain just won’t start up again, won’t start thinking again, refuses to function in a vain attempt to keep him from having to understand and acknowledge the truth. 

To understand what exactly he did. 

His mind just keeps repeating: he’s right. He’s right. He’s _right_.

Len’s right.

This – all of this – is wrong.

Horrifically, awfully, _terribly_ wrong. 

Unjust.

Illegal.

_Wrong._

And they just – went with it. 

All of them. Barry. Joe. Cisco. Caitlin. All of them.

They just agreed. 

They just let it be.

They just allowed it to happen.

Each of them could have stepped up to the plate and said: no. This is wrong. And they didn’t.

They didn’t do anything.

They can’t blame that on Wells. That’s on them. 

They just let themselves be swept away by the excitement and unreality of it – superpowers! Superheroes! Supervillains! And when each episode is over, then the bad guy goes away into the jail cell, never to be thought of again…

A modern oubliette, as Len says. Put them there and forget about them.

(In the beginning, Wells said they would rehabilitate them. No one even remembered to try.)

“Listen, okay, maybe we didn’t handle all this the best way,” Cisco starts, coming to Barry’s defense. Ever the loyal friend, even when Barry is the one in the wrong. “But you can’t just –”

“Shut up,” Len says. “You don’t get to talk. Not after what you’ve done.”

Cisco jerks back as if he’s been hit. “After what _I’ve_ done –”

“Oh, yes, you,” Len says. “Friendly, smiling, cheerful Cisco Ramon, the jailor of STAR Labs. Or is someone else operating the controls? I thought that was _your_ job.”

Now it’s Cisco’s turn to go mute, horror twisting his face as he opens and closes his mouth. 

“Tell me, do you feed them?” Len asks him, his voice biting. “Do you clean their cells? Let them go on bathroom breaks? How do you do that – drug them, maybe? Does it make you feel _powerful_ , treating them like rats in a cage?”

“No – no, I don’t – I’m not _like_ that –”

“Funny,” Len says. “From what I hear, you’re _exactly_ like that. Tell me, Ramon, do you know that it’s legally considered torture to deliberately play loud music at someone who can’t escape?”

Cisco blanches.

“Oh yeah, I know about that,” Len says. “Torturing a deaf man, how fun! But hey, he was mean to you at work a few times; I’m sure that balances it all out in the eyes of law, right? No jury’ll ever convict you, ‘cause being an asshole, causing some property damage, and getting into a fight with Barry, well, you know, that’s it, that’s three strikes right there –”

“You don’t –” Caitlin starts.

“Oh, don’t you start, _doctor_ ,” Len interrupts venomously. “Unless the version of the Hippocratic Oath you took comes with an exception that allows you to care for people in illegal solitary confinement without doing shit all to remedy their status. ‘Do no harm’, right? Do no good either, apparently.”

“You’re right,” Barry croaks. “You’re – you’re right.”

“You bet I’m right,” Len says. “You’re keeping people locked away – locked away in _solitary confinement_ – do you even know what that does to a person? Even in regular prison, where they know they have access to a lawyer, where they know they still have rights, where they know that at least someone knows where they are and _cares_?”

He looks tired, suddenly. “It’s much worse when you know there’s no one there,” he says. “So much worse. When you’re all alone in a room, left alone to suffer, and you _know_ no one is watching out for you ‘cause without the law you’ve got no rights but what human mercy can offer – and human mercy runs pretty damn short.” 

Len’s imprisonment. 

Locked alone in a room, guarded by Family thugs intent on torturing him to death, and no one knowing where he was.

Of course.

Barry - Barry should have thought. Barry should have _realized_.

They've treated the metas fairly well – excluding whatever it was Len was referencing with Cisco, which sounds seriously problematic – but that still doesn’t make it right.

“The laws might be soft in Central,” Len says, getting a hold of himself. “But by God I will see them applied. You’re going to transfer every single meta you have here to police custody –”

“We’ll do that,” Barry promises. “We will, I promise. I’m sorry, Len. I should’ve done better.” He swallows. “If you don’t want to be with me anymore, after this, I’d understand –”

Len starts laughing.

It’s not a good laugh. It’s sharp and jagged and very nearly hysterical. 

“Barry,” he chokes out. “Oh, Barry. You don’t understand. The question isn’t _are we staying together_. The only question left here is how many years in prison you’re all going to be sentenced to.”

“Hold up,” Joe says, straightening. “You’re not seriously –”

“Oh, you bet I am,” Len says. “I’m going to bring hell down on your heads so hard you won’t even know what hit you.”

That gets them all talking all at once. 

“You can’t! The investigation – Wells –”

“We have to help –”

“It’s important –”

“There are mitigating factors –”

“You have to give me a chance,” Barry begs. “Let me fix what I’ve done –”

“I don’t care!” Len bellows. “Right now, I couldn’t care less about the investigation. You’re all going to –”

His phone rings.

Len falls abruptly silent.

Everyone does, mostly from surprise at the sudden sound.

Barry’s more surprised than most, though. Len’s phone basically never rings. It’s a joke by now, one that Barry’s laughed over with Kara, with Iris, with everyone – Len always texts, never calls, and no one _ever_ calls him. 

Len digs his phone out of his pocket.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Joe says. “You can’t honestly be answering –”

“Shut up,” Len snaps, jabbing violently at his phone to accept the call. “What the hell do you want? Now’s not a good time, so –”

He falls silent, his face suddenly going stark white. 

“Len?” Barry asks, stepping forward. He’s pretty sure they’re not dating anymore and he can’t blame Len for it in the slightest after what just happened, but he still can’t help but be concerned. He can’t help but reach out for him, to try to help him with whatever is causing that expression.

“Boss? What’s going on?” Kara asks, stepping forward herself, sliding neatly around him to stand between him and Barry, her back to Barry as she protects Len –

Protects Len _from Barry_.

And she's right.

Because this is all Barry’s fault, in the end. If he’d told Len the truth at the beginning, then maybe he wouldn’t have had this reaction – maybe then Len would have understood how much Wells had misled them all, how he’d played on their enthusiasm and naïveté to brush over their concerns, how he’d led them all to think that this was all okay – maybe – 

But Barry hadn’t told him.

Now his only hope is that Len will decide to give them just enough mercy to try to prove themselves. To prove that they do mean well, that they aren’t evil, that they aren’t _corrupt_. 

Because that’s where all this came from, isn’t it?

Central City’s corruption, seeping through its pores, affecting them all. 

Joe, an officer of the law who just wanted to do the right thing, who wanted to help people, but who thought nothing of locking the ‘bad guys’ away to keep them from hurting anyone – who thought nothing of the rights those ‘bad guys’ themselves had, because it’d never been all that important to his work before.

Caitlin, a doctor, sworn to help people, forgetting that she had to do more than just care for their wounds.

Cisco, so focused on the technical aspects of how STAR Labs’ prison worked that he forgot about the value of the humans lives they kept within its walls. The nerd who treated life like a comic book, and didn’t remember that the story went on past the closing of the last page – who thought that things were ‘awesome’ without considering their moral value.

And Barry.

Barry, who, of all people, should have known better. 

Barry, who struggled against injustice when it was his father suffering under it. Barry, who took the hard line against Dibny because he thought justice mattered. Barry, who just wanted to help.

And look what he’s done with it.

“Boss,” Kara says again, more urgently, when Len doesn’t answer her even after he’s ended the call. “Boss, tell me what’s wrong. What happened?”

“Mick,” Len croaks.

Barry straightens at that. “What happened?” he demands. “Is he okay?” 

After all, Barry’s the one who was dating Len. He knows exactly what Mick means to Len.

Mick’s Len’s best friend, his partner in crime, his anchor – his version of Iris. Mick’s the one Len lied to, the way Barry lied to Iris; Mick’s the one who Len wants so desperately to apologize to, the way Barry wanted to apologize to Iris. 

Except Barry got his chance to do that, and despite his fears, Iris forgave him; he knows that Len would sell his soul for the chance to have the same. 

He knows that Len is not nearly as okay as he pretend to be. He knows that Len hasn’t really gotten over everything that happened to him: the betrayal, the torture, the loss of the life he built for twenty years, and all of that wrapped up in his grief and rage over what happened to Mick.

He knows that Len is barely holding it together, with nothing but strength of will and a desperate need for atonement he’s sublimated into an unending drive for vengeance. 

If Mick dies, Len will shatter into a million pieces.

Barry doesn’t want that to happen.

Even after all of this, he still – he still –

He’s pretty sure he loves Len. 

Shit.

What terrible timing for _that_ little revelation, given that even in the highly unlikely event that Len decides _not_ to throw them all into prison for the rest of their lives, he’s still definitely not going to forgive Barry for, well, any of this.

And Barry deserves it, too. He deserves never to be forgiven.

He’s going to be the reason all his friends go to jail.

(He should have told Iris from the very beginning. She would never have agreed to tolerate any of this.)

“Boss!” Kara is saying urgently, pulling the phone out of his unmoving hands, waving her hands before his unmoving eyes. “Boss, talk to me! What happened to Mick? Tell me what happened!”

“Len,” Barry says quietly, stepping forward to stand by Kara’s side. He knows she doesn’t want him there – her glare is very nearly hot enough to burn, just like Len’s always joking it is – but he thinks he might be able to get through to Len despite the shock of whatever news he just got. Len knows that Barry understands his relationship with Mick. “Len, tell me you hear me.”

Len’s eyes move and land on Barry.

“Tell us what happened,” Barry instructs. 

“It’s – Mick,” Len croaks. 

“What about Mick?” Kara asks again. “What about Mick, boss?”

Len swallows as if his throat has suddenly gone dry, then swallows again when his voice fails him. His eyes are wide and his hands are shaking and he looks – shattered, somehow. 

“It’s Mick,” he says again. And then – “He woke up.”


	17. 17

Len is hovering by the door again, wondering if he should go in or not.

On one hand: it's Mick.

This is all so characteristic of him, really. Just when Len is losing hope, just when the doctors are starting to give up, Mick decides it’s time to defy expectations yet again and struggle his way back to consciousness in dramatic fashion. And not the momentary, illusory consciousness that Len's become accustomed to, moments where Mick's eyes would flicker open and his mouth would move in empty, meaningless syllables.

Real consciousness.

Mick's _back_. 

He's alive, he's - not intact, no, but he's been acing all of the doctors' cognitive tests and he remembers all the facts and dates and events that he should.

He's grumpy and irritable over the food quality and friendly with the nurses while being a jackass to the surgeons and all in all is just so very _Mick Rory_ that it makes Len want to cry just from sheer relief and having missed him so damn much.

(He may or may not have taken a few hours in a convenient hospital storage closet to do just that, father-imposed inability to shed proper tears aside; the world will never know for sure.)

So obviously Len should go in and talk to him.

On the other hand...this is _Mick_.

The man Len betrayed for years, being a cop without ever telling him. The man who rescued Len anyway. The man who paid the price for it.

And oh, what a price - two-thirds of his body covered in burns, now twisted into scars despite the best efforts of the medical establishment. Serious deterioration and atrophy of his muscles from being in a coma. Bed sores, a swollen throat from routine intubation, scars on his lungs, urinary tract infections...

His strong body, which he was always so proud of, decaying away around him like a living corpse - and all Len's fault.

Len was always willing to accept that bargain: that he’d take Mick's anger or hatred, whatever, anything, anything at all, as long as Mick woke up as himself. But sitting there with an unconscious man and wishing for that to happen is pretty different from actually having to walk inside the hospital room and face the music.

And so he hovers, wondering, debating, searching for some sort of sign of what he should do -

"Snart. Stop skulking around out there and get in here."

Well. That's certainly clear enough.

Len creeps into the room.

Mick is - 

Mick is beautifully, wonderfully _alive_ , and honest to God, everything else is so much less important that Len can't remember why he was so reluctant to come in.

Of course, then he tries to open his mouth and say something, realizes he has no idea what to say because months of rehearsing apologies is apparently rendered totally useless after a month of total panicked despair followed by frenzied overwhelming delight and relief, and he abruptly remembers what was stopping him.

What does he even say? How does he even start?

"Where are you showering?" Mick asks.

...on Len's list of ways this conversation could go, that wasn't really one of them.

"Showering?" Len asks incredulously.

"Showering," Mick confirms. "You like to shower in the mornings, it’s morning now, and your very friendly piece of skirt tells me you haven't left the hospital in days. So you gotta be showering somewhere here."

"There's a shower in the nurse's wing," Len says blankly. "Why - wait, what piece of skirt? Do you mean _Danvers_?"

"Yeah, her," Mick says. "Skirt. She was wearing one – red skirt, with mesh leggings underneath, and also a cute but very concealing sweater with the puppy holding the ice cream cone. She says you know the one...?"

Len is, in fact, familiar with that outfit; it's Danvers' go-to security blanket outfit, the one she wears when she's stressing over something. Usually over Len being dumb, if he's being honest.

Hmm. He really _has_ been living at the hospital the past few days, hasn't he?

"Yeah," Len says. "Definitely Danvers. When'd you see her, anyway?"

His accent slips deeper whenever he's around Mick, he notices; a little less nasal overall, but affecting more words, adding more shortenings and dropping more words. A silent sign of how instinctively comfortable he is in Mick's presence, no matter how stressed he is.

"You were apparently unconscious in a chair in the hallway at the time," Mick says with shrug he aborts with a wince halfway through. "She wanted to introduce herself, set me up with a new phone and group-chat and some shit like that, have me sign some papers -"

"Papers?" Len asks sharply. He'll - deal with Mick actually having a chance to read Danvers' long-threatened group-chat logs later. As far later as possible. "What papers?"

"Apparently I've been suing the police department for being dickheads while I've been out cold and now that I'm awake she needs me to agree to keep it going," Mick says. 

Len barely manages to keep from laughing. Of course Danvers would remember that lawsuit Len had some lawyer file in a fit of agonized grief right after it all happened, even though Len himself has long forgotten all about it. How had he ever managed without a personal assistant before now? 

"Didn't really ask much past that," Mick continues. "You know I never miss a chance to stick it to the pigs."

Len flinches.

Right.

Trust Mick to bring up the elephant in the room right away.

Mick hates cops.

Len’s been one for years.

Mick just looks at Len steadily. "You never told me," he says quietly. "Why?"

"It wasn't true when we first met in juvie," Len says miserably, hovering by the familiar chair next to Mick's bed but not actually sitting down. "And when we hooked back up later on, started working together on jobs just once in a while, I was brand new and just absolute shit at it, paranoid as fuck. Barely even spoke to the one or two guys that _did_ know, my handlers with the CCPD and the Feds; didn't feel safe enough. And by the time I pulled my head outta my ass, it'd been years and we were partners and I knew you hated pigs and I didn't want you to hate _me_ and -"

Mick starts laughing.

Not in a scornful or miserable way, the way Len might have feared it would be, but actual real deep laughter of the sort he hasn't heard from Mick in far, far too long.

"What?" Len asks, suspicious. "What'd I say?"

"I thought it was 'cause you didn't trust me," Mick chokes out between belly laughs that are probably hurting him. "I shoulda known it was because you're just an idiot. Same as _always_."

"Hey!" Len protests automatically.

Not that he takes any offense - he knows Mick calls him an idiot because that's how Mick demonstrates affection, with friendly insults and ribbing and casual death threats.

But he's _not_ an idiot!

At the very least he doesn't think he's done anything that qualifies him to be called an idiot at this exact moment, anyway.

"Fine, then," Mick says, getting better control over himself - probably better for his health and well-being - though he still has a giant shit-eating grin on his face. "Not an idiot. A goober that can't do social situations for shit, that better?"

"Not really."

"S'true though."

"It ain't! I can do social shit! I do social shit _just fine_!"

"Even when you're not conning someone?"

"Even when I'm not conning someone!"

After all, Len assures himself, Barry totally continued to want to date him even after he'd stopped trying to con him...

Maybe that's not the best example.

"Uh-huh," Mick says, looking amused. There are little wrinkles of laughter by his eyes; Len hadn't noticed those, before. Amazing what months of memorizing a person's slack unconscious face will reveal. "Lemme guess. That'd be this Barry Allen guy Danvers' chats keep mentioning."

"...you've read them."

That emotion he's feeling right now - is it horror, extra horror, or _extreme_ horror?

Mix of all of the above, clearly.

"Oh yeah. I've definitely read them," Mick says gleefully. "But I wanna hear about it from you directly."

"Mick."

"Don't you 'Mick' me. I've got no other entertainment right now, and you know I like romance shit."

"You like pulp sci-fi and ninja romance stuff, not _just_ romance," Len objects. "This story..." 

He trails off, considering for a moment. 

"Well, it ain't got ninjas," he finally says. "As far as I know, anyway, though there was a weird mention once or twice of something fucked up happening Starling, I dunno. And it might've been a bit romantic, but right now it's mostly just tragic."

"Tell me about it anyway."

"Tell you about _what_?" Len complains, finally taking a seat next to Mick on his bed. There's a chair, too, but chairs are for losers who don't get to sit on comfy beds with their best friends who, amazingly, appear to be forgiving them for - well, everything. How Mick can do that sort of thing, Len has no idea. "There's nothing to it. I got bored in between investigating the million and one corrupt assholes in the CCPD and find out this one guy who's been acting suspicious apparently disappeared for nine months, supposedly in a coma, but then reappeared with no damage and these _amazing_ abs -"

"No kidding, I've seen the pics."

"Goddamnit, I’m gonna gut Danvers; those are technically evidence and she shouldn't be sharing them. Anyway, turns out he ain't corrupt, he's just a fucking _superhero_. Who'd have thought, you know?"

"Not really anyone's first guess," Mick agrees.

"And first I think he's okay, you know," Len continues. He's ranting. He's aware that he's ranting. He can't seem to _stop_ himself from ranting. "Because he's kind and friendly and optimistic and he's got this stupid smile that lights up the room, but I'm thinking no way anyone's this perfect, he's gotta be up to something, but I get this idea in my head that it must be that he's _investigating_ the superhero - this is all happening before I figure out he is the superhero, that is - so I start dating him _anyway_ -"

"Dates go well?"

"Amazingly. He legitimately thinks my puns are funny."

"Clearly a match made in some level of punster hell," Mick says.

"Shut up, puns _are_ funny."

"Lowest form of wit."

"Lowest circle of hell's supposed to be cold, so I guess it fits," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Did I tell you yet that he thought for a while that I was a supervillain named Captain Cold? That's my new nickname at the precinct."

"No, but that's _hilarious_. You always did like your cold puns. Actually, you probably didn't know it, but people – criminals, that is – sometimes called you Ice-heart Snart."

"That's...awful. I'm glad I didn't know about that."

"No kidding. Captain Cold's much better. So he thought all of that about you and dated you anyway?"

"No, he didn't realize I was the Internal Affairs guy at first; I didn't tell him ‘cause I was investigating him. Anyway - wait, where was I?"

"Amazing dates," Mick prompts.

"Well, they were," Len says. "Absolutely amazing. Best I've ever had - just talking and laughing and just being happy hanging out and all that stuff that comes right out of that romance stuff you're always on about - and then, of course, just as I start thinking that I finally got lucky, it all blows up in my face. Turns out he's just as bad as I thought when I first started looking into him, and I should be happy to be proven right except for some reason I'm _not_ , and now I can't stop thinking about how awfully he's gonna do in prison when he finally gets sent there like he deserves. I feel like shit about it and I don't know _why_ -"

"Of course you don't," Mick says, sounding amused. "You wouldn't."

Len eyes him suspiciously. "You say that like you _do_ know."

No way. Mick's been in a freaking _coma_ ; how could he have figured out what the hell's going on with Len's emotional state before Len did?

"Lenny," Mick says, sounding just a bit patronizing. "I might be a blockhead, but I've been interpreting your emotions for you since juvie. 'course I know."

"You're not a blockhead," Len protests automatically, always on guard against anyone - even Mick - putting down Mick's intelligence. He hates it when people do that; Mick's one of the smartest guys he knows, even if he doesn't talk all that pretty. "You just don't got as much education as some, s'all."

Though Mick's got a point about Len's emotions. 

Not that Len's going to ask him to explain.

It doesn't matter, after all, what's done is done. Who cares how he feels about it? 

Who cares about understanding why Len feels like he got a shiv to the gut every time he even thinks about Barry - about _Allen_ , damnit - and a feeling like he swallowed crushed glass but also a weird kind of happiness left over from when every thought of Barry brought him joy? 

Who cares -

Len. Len cares. Len cares a lot.

"Okay, I'll bite," he says, giving in. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"You're in love with him," Mick says. "Obviously."

...what?

No.

Impossible.

In _love_? Len doesn't do love. 

Len's _never_ done love, or at least not love like that - love for Lisa, love for Mick, yes, but not the stupid sort of Valentine's Day love, the type you read about in novels that you don't admit to reading, the type that makes the world turn around you and leaves you breathless and chokes in your throat, ripping your heart out of your chest because it belongs to someone else who doesn't care as much as you care, and leaves you with an awful gaping hole in your belly whenever you think about the fact they're going to go away for good somewhere where you won't see that optimistic smile or hear that laugh or -

Shit.

_Shit_.

"...I really am an idiot that can't do social situations for shit," Len says aloud, realizing.

"You really are," Mick says, but he sounds fond. "Don't worry; I came to terms with that years ago."

"But I _can't_ be in love with him," Len says, trying so desperately to shove that knowledge back under the river of denial where it came from that he doesn't even make a de-Nile pun like he usually does. "I can't! He - he's - he's done unforgivable things – kidnapping, imprisonment, solitary – literal _war crimes_ – and he should've known better, he's _corrupt_ -"

"Sounds to me like he made some mistakes -" 

"Mistakes?!" Len yowls.

Mick holds up a hand. "Okay, fine, yeah, some of those mistakes are crimes, some might even be war crimes, but seriously, Snart, if you stopped liking someone just because they committed a couple of horrific crimes, you and me, we wouldn't be friends."

"It's not the same thing!" Len protests. 

"I'm an arsonist, Lenny; I literally murder people sometimes."

"Usually as an unintended side effect," Len says dismissively. Intent matters, when it comes to criminal stuff; most of the time Mick could be blamed for nothing worse than negligent manslaughter and that's only technically murder. Len checked. "He's _corrupt_ , Mick. He put himself out as being a hero, as someone doing the right thing, as someone upholding the law, and all the while he's doing stuff like that in the shadows...I can't be in love with someone like that, Mick. I _can't_. Look what corruption did to you! Look what it did to me and Lisa, when it was my dad! Look what -"

Mick catches Len's hands, which Len has been waving angrily in the air.

"Don't move like that!" Len exclaims, losing his prior train of thought immediately. "Your muscles aren't used to sudden movement; you'll hurt yourself!"

"It hurt," Mick says. "It was still worth it. Boss, you're spiraling."

"I'm - what?"

"Spiraling. My shrink told me about it; you get stuck in a mental rut and you can't get out of it, so you just go in circles, on and on, torturing yourself with all your bad thoughts. In this case, it's me." Mick squeezes Len's hands. "You've been torturing yourself with what happened to me. Except instead of thinking about it and dealing with it and getting over it, you've poured everything you feel into your war on corruption, focused so much on it that you're seeing unforgivable corruption and betrayal every way you look. But you don't gotta keep doing that. I'm here. I'm okay. I'm _alive_."

Len stares at Mick.

His hands, still enclosed in Mick's, start shaking. His shoulders, too, and he can't seem to make them stop.

"You're alive," Len croaks, suddenly finding it hard to talk. He’d known Mick was alive and mostly well for a while now, couple of days, but it suddenly feels like he’s learning it all over again. "You're _alive_. You're alive and you're talking and you're you and - fuck, Mick, I nearly lost you."

"I know."

"I can't do this shit without you," Len says, desperate now. "Any of it. Life, the universe, everything; it doesn't matter. I need you by my side, Mick. I need my partner - I need my _best friend_. It all turns to ash without you."

"I'm here," Mick says, strong and solid and dependable as ever. "You've got me."

"I don't -" Deserve you, Len is about to say, only he chokes on it; he never knew he felt that way. "I lied to you. For _years_. By omission, by commission...I put my job above our partnership. I shouldn't have. I really shouldn't have. You're more important - you're the _most_ important. I ain't never gonna put anything above you ever again. Not work, not romance, not anything nor anyone. Not _anything_. I'm so goddamn sorry, Mick. Not just for what I did to you, for what happened, but for the lying. For all of it."

"You're an idiot," Mick says, and he squeezes Len's hands again. "Total idiot. Boss, it's _fine_. Really. I get it. I get why you made that choice - especially now that I know it was all about your issues, not about me and what you thought of me. Even before that, though, I got it. I knew you were a pig and I came to get you anyway, remember? Through gunfire and furious Families, and that's saying something."

Len nods mutely.

"I did it because we're partners," Mick tells him. "And we're always gonna be partners. Always gonna be friends, even if you do something dumb like lie to me or fall in love with a target of your investigation _before_ you finish investigating him -"

"Hey," Len protests, but weakly. Mick has a point. A very good point.

"No matter what, it doesn't matter," Mick concludes. "You and me against the world, remember? That ain't changed."

Len nods, and turns his hands to squeeze Mick's hands back.

"Now for the love of fuck can we _please_ stop talking about feelings?" Mick asks, almost begging. "You really don't pay me enough to be your shrink. You couldn't. You could offer me all of Fort Knox and I wouldn't be your shrink."

Len snorts, maybe a little wetly but not from tears because he doesn't do tears, and pulls back his hands. "Yeah, sure, we can stop. I think I hit my yearly quota of feelings there."

"No kidding," Mick says fervently. "You hit yours, and mine, and then mine again a few time. I'll let you off the hook this one time, just 'cause I know you've been saving it up the whole time I was out, but still, for someone who likes to say he don't got a heart, you sure got a hell of a lot to say. Oh, and don't think I didn't notice you slipping that 'ash' pun in there."

"Ash is the right word!" Len protests. "Just because it's fire-related don't mean it's always a pun!"

"With you, it's _always_ a pun," Mick says firmly.

Len laughs. If it's a little more hysterical and sounds a bit more like sobs than it normally does, they'll both be more than willing to overlook that.

As they like to remind each other, they don’t have hearts – or at least they know to keep them well hidden.

(God, Mick is Len's _best friend_ \- how did he last so long without him? No wonder everything's been screwing up left and right while he's gone.)

"Hey, wait a minute," Mick says thoughtfully, "while we're talking about this shit, before we shove it all down the memory hole, tell me - how come you never had to turn _me_ in? I did plenty of crimes while we were running as thieves."

" _Were_ running?" Len echoes, alarmed, and he looks down at Mick's legs to see if something's happened to them in the last few minutes. The doctors told him Mick would get his mobility back, or at least most of it, and his legs aren't as affected as his back and shoulders. There should be no impact on his ability to run, or at least to walk quickly. Or does Mick know something he doesn't...?

"Yeah, I hear through the grapevine that you got yourself a new job," Mick says dryly. "Not much thieving to be done there. Plus I figure it might be time to retire from the whole thief thing myself, too, all things considered."

"Ah. Right. I forgot."

_Metaphorically_ running, right, that's an option. 

"Don't go forgetting you quitting crime, boss; it's a kinda big deal. You really got a business card like Skirt says?"

"Yeah, it's awful," Len says. "Stamped, embossed proof that I'm legit now."

"Embossed," Mick marvels. "Now I _know_ I gotta retire, if you've shifted over to doing the hunting."

"I'm Internal Affairs, actually," Len says. "I only hunt corrupt cops, district attorneys, and other government employees, not criminals."

"Really? Huh. Shoulda known you'd find a loophole – crime-fighting without actual _crime_ -fighting."

"What can I say? I'm very good at what I do," Len sniffs, smiling when Mick laughs - finally getting the double meaning that's always been there. "And, uh, about your crimes -"

"Yeah?"

"So, I might've registered you as a CI couple of years ago," Len confesses, deciding that exactly how many years constituted a couple was an open question up for debate. Couple could totally mean a decade plus. "Proper legal confidential informant for both the CCPD and the Feds. Then after a few years of that, I got you swapped over to being classified as full undercover -"

"Wait," Mick says, alarmed. "You telling me the reason all of my prison sentences were so short was 'cause the judges all thought I was a _pig_?!"

"You didn't care about the reason back then!"

"I'm a _pig_?!"

"No, you never went to police academy, you ain't a pig," Len says, rolling his eyes. "I told 'em you were working for me as a non-officer agent, and it ain't like they really care about a few arsons when they've got the whole set of Families to take down. You're a snitch at _best_."

Mick considers this. 

"I'm okay with being a rat," he finally decides. "I like rats. They're cute. Remember Axl?"

Len does remember Mick's pet rat Axl. Mick doted on him, and even Len got pretty fond. They ended up having to find him a new owner - a woman with a gigantic rat cage that took up half the living room, which both she and Mick agreed was the right balance of pet-to-owner space (Len thought they were both nuts) - and he lived to a ripe old age with god-knows-how-many descendants.

"But seriously," Mick continues, "they actually all bought that? Didn't they ever ask you why I was willing to do all that work without being paid?"

"Well. Actually..."

"Boss. Boss, no. I know that tone of voice. You telling me I got paid? Is there some savings account somewhere with my name forged on it that you conveniently never told me about?"

"Maybe."

Mick rolls his eyes, grinning; he knows that's as good as a yes. "Anything else you'd like to tell me while we're at it?"

Len considers this. "...did Danvers' group-chat mention my cold gun?" he finally asks, reaching down and patting the piece in question. He'd been carrying it with him in case Barry tried to come confront him or something, though luckily Barry hasn't.

Barry wouldn't. He knows that, now that he's thinking a bit more calmly. Not at a hospital, certainly, but not ever. He wouldn't force his presence on Len like that, thinking he was unwanted.

"At length, yeah," Mick says dryly. "Your new baby."

"Well," Len says, ignoring that. So what if his gun is the best, sweetest girl he's ever seen, once you exclude Lisa from the calculations? "What Danvers _doesn't_ know is that it came as part of a set - one cold gun, one heat gun."

"Heat gun? Like a flamethrower?"

"Better - it manipulates the intensity of infrared waves. You can light _anything_ on fire."

"Boss," Mick says. "I've already forgiven you for the whole pig thing. You don't need to heap on the presents."

"You saying you don't want it?"

"You bet your ass I want it!" Mick exclaims, laughing. "Man, I'm gonna need to thank this Allen guy when I meet him; you never used to give out such good gifts."

Len flinches. Just a little, but Mick notices, of course.

"Boss?"

"You won't, uh, you won't exactly be meeting him," Len says. "Anytime...ever."

"Why not?"

"Because after I found out about the secret prison thing, I had his foster dad arrested for corruption, got warrants to search the homes of his two best friends, and got Barry suspended from his job without pay pending investigation. So I don't think he's really in the mood to talk to me."

"...shit, boss," Mick says after a long few minutes. "You sure love to put the 'over' in 'over-reaction', don't you?"

"They committed crimes," Len says defensively. "Very bad crimes. And they should've known better!"

" _Boss!_ Ain't you the one always telling me about how intent matters? Ain't they being manipulated by some mastermind creep asshole who's good enough to be playing the Families? Even criminal courts don't consider stuff done under duress and deception to be as bad!"

Len winces. That's...not actually wrong. Sure, they committed some fairly horrific crimes and they totally should've known better, but there were some extenuating circumstances he probably ought've thought a bit more about. Any man who could play not just one but multiple Families clearly had an edge when it came to mind games - and don't think Len hasn't noticed the way Barry'd described the toxic atmosphere and emotional jibes and the almost parental relationship the guy set up in his office, which is the sort of environment that can convince even otherwise intelligent people to do seriously shady things.

It's not an excuse, not at all. But it is something of an explanation. Probably not enough to knock down the charge from primary to accessory, but a judge could definitely look at that and find lots there to help mitigate -

"Boss..."

"I know, I know! You don't understand, I was just really angry -"

"Boss!" someone that is definitely not Mick exclaims, bursting through the door. "We've found something!"

Len is off the bed, one crutch in the air wielded as a club, before they even finish the sentence, and then he realizes it's just Detective Thawne and Iris.

"Oh, it's you," he says blankly. "How'd you even know to find me here?"

"Uh," Thawne says, eying the raised crutch warily. "Ms. Danvers told us. Pretty reluctantly. You - wanna put that crutch down? You're looking a bit unsteady."

Len rolls his eyes and does, sitting back down.

"Does that work?" Iris asks. "As an improvised weapon, I mean?"

"Better than you'd think," Len says dryly.

"How come he's still got crutches, anyway?" Mick asks from his bed. "Ain't it been months since he got fucked up?"

"Apparently he keeps tearing his injuries back open," Iris says.

"Damnit, boss..."

"That's not the reason," Len says, even though he kind of does do that more than he should. "It's because the second gunshot nicked my spine and it takes lots longer to heal from that."

"And you keep tearing your injuries back open," Iris says wisely.

"...and that," Len concedes grumpily.

"I'm Iris," she adds, waving at Mick. "Iris West. This is my fiancé, Eddie Thawne. We're helping Captain Snart here investigate the disappearances -"

"Heard of you," Mick says, waving in the general direction of his phone. "Skirt – uh, Danvers – she’s got a group-chat with running commentary up -"

"I want in," Iris says at once. “That sounds amazing.”

"- but you said West, right? Didn't the boss here just..? Why you still working with him after that?"

"Because my dad deserves to get into trouble over this shit," Iris says, an angry glint in her eyes. "Between the lying and the deception and the blatant aiding and abetting of _human trafficking_ , I'm starting to wonder if I ever really knew him at all -"

"Hold up," Len says. "Fiancé? That's new. Congrats, both of you."

That works splendidly to derail Iris, who spends the next few moments showing them both her ring while Thawne blushes and smiles and is entirely unable to look away from Iris, stars in his eyes the whole time. 

"Nice," Len says. "Tasteful - pretty, but with some class."

"I'd definitely steal it," Mick agrees.

"Definitely," Len agrees. “I could fence that in minutes.”

"You're both very sweet," Iris says. "And if it ever goes missing, I'll be sure to check with you two first. Anyway, not the point! We came here to tell you that we've figured it out!"

"The Families' 'big day'?" Len asks, immediately interested. "Or Wells' connection to it?"

"Both, actually," Thawne says, brightening. "It's complicated and - well, a little frightening, but we think we have an idea of where the rabbit hole leads, at least, although I wouldn't go as far as Iris and say we actually figured it out."

"We got a good start," Iris says, with dignity. "That's further than most people've gotten."

"And you managed to do it without being 'disappeared', well done you," Len drawls. 

"He means that as a compliment," Mick remarks.

"Yes, we gathered," Iris says, grinning at him. "Listen to the tone, not the words, right?"

"Sometimes the tone'll mislead you, but yeah, generally. I usually use body posture - the more lounging, the better his mood."

Len pointedly straightens back up, causing Iris to snigger, Thawne to smile, and Mick to chuckle.

"What's this about Families, though?" Mick asks. "Thought Snart was focused on corrupt cops and government people now."

"I'm sure I can find a police corruption hook _somewhere_ ," Len says airily. "You know what they say, you can take the boy out of org crime work..."

"Not a real saying, Snart," Mick says, long-suffering. "Never was."

"Actually, you might have more of a hook than we originally thought," Thawne says. "You see, the Families -"

"Plural?"

"That's right, Mr. Rory -"

"Mick."

"Mick," Iris says with relish. She's going to use this to try to get permission to call Len by his name, he just knows she is. Pity she's doomed to disappointment. "Yes, Families, plural; we've confirmed that all the Families in Central have agreed to work together on this."

" _All_ of 'em? Shit."

"Agreed," Len says. 

"Shoulda stayed in the coma..."

"Don't say shit like that or I'll smack you with a crutch," Len tells him, then transfers his attention back to the other two. "So what is it? What's the big day? And, perhaps equally important, when?"

"We can answer your last question best," Thawne says. "We're still not sure exactly _what_ the Families are planning - we know it involves a lot of movement, a lot of manpower, though probably a lot of that is just security - but we've identified what the major Central-wide event they're going to use to conceal their mobilization."

"You're not going to like it," Iris interjects.

"I never liked any part of this," Len points out. "Hit me."

"The Families' big day goes down on Election Day," Thawne says.

"...Election Day," Len says. "Election Day. _Election Day_?!"

He's pretty sure he's not adequately conveying the sheer horror he's feeling right now. 

Election Day.

Not the one held in November, which is all well and good, but the important one for Central City purposes: the primary election that happens each year in May.

The day where the _real_ candidate selection takes place. 

Only one of the wildest days of the entire Central City social calendar. 

Most of the country has faded into widespread apathy, not bothering with votes that they feel rarely matter, and all the more so when it's "only" a primary – but not Central City.

Oh, no, not Central City, with its still-functioning political machine with its armies of thugs available to help 'encourage' voting. Central City's government might be rife with corruption, yes, and one-party control is practically a given, but at some point some genius decided to deal with the fact that there are _competing sources_ of corruption by allowing a total free-for-all when it came to who got the nod for what position. 

Corporate candidates battle it out with nationalists and progressives and reformers and who-the-hell-knows-what-else. In Central, even the communists abandon their flag in favor of competing in the bloodbath of Election Day, knowing that the political machine would force the city - and with it, the state - to fall into line come the federal election day, a far less important date.

Election Day.

And the Families are moving.

Not a good combination.

Especially since –

“Election Day is tomorrow!” he exclaims. 

"Yeah," Iris says grimly. "Not good at all. Like Eddie says, we haven't figured out exactly what they're up to, but if it's on Election Day, dollars to donuts is that it involves the election itself."

"And with the Commissioner hoping to run for mayor while the mayor runs for governor, getting anyone's attention to doing anything to stop them will be a trick and a half," Len says, equally grim. "What'd you find out about Wells?"

"We think he's being used as a liaison between the Families and more legitimate entities," Thawne says. "Although why -"

He cuts off in the middle of his sentence.

Quite reasonably, in Len's view, given that they are no longer alone in the room.

The Man in Yellow is here.

The name Barry gave him is apt, Len thinks; far more than the Reverse Flash. Beyond the monstrous speed, there's nothing of Barry here at all, not even a reflection.

Standing in the middle of the room with his entire body vibrating at a consistent blur that Barry hasn't mastered, utterly human but for his demonically bright red eyes, the Man in Yellow smiles. 

"Don't let me interrupt you, gentlemen," he says, his voice as blurred as his face. He's being obnoxiously courteous, in a sort of arrogant narcissist way that suggests he's entertaining himself in the moments before he plans to kill them all. "You were saying -"

"And lady," Len interrupts, rising to his feet.

"...what?"

"Gentlemen, and lady," Len says. "I believe Iris identifies as a lady."

"I do," Iris says, looking somewhat perturbed by Len's sudden interest in grammar. "‘Gentlemen and lady’ is in fact correct."

The Man in Yellow - Wells himself, or someone in his employ - blinks those shining red eyes, clearly taken aback.

Len assumes he had some sort of introductory speech planned out. Too bad for him that Len isn’t the type to willingly subject himself to evil monologues. 

"Would you like to move on to the part where you threaten to kill us all?" Len inquires. "Or do you generally just go straight to the actual murder?"

The Man in Yellow laughs, the sound ringing through the room. "I usually like to make a point of it," he says, raising a vibrating hand. It's moving as fast as a sawblade - if he touches any of them with that, they're done for. "But I think you're right that I should just move on to the main event -"

Len shoots him with the cold gun he'd wrestled into position while the Man in Yellow was distracted by Len’s grammatical non-sequitur. 

The Man in Yellow screams.

"Iris, Thawne, run!" Len shouts, keeping the cold blast aimed dead center at the Man in Yellow's face and torso. He'd theorized, based on what happened when it hit Barry, that a hit straight to the head would be disabling to a speedster as long as the beam was maintained; with such key areas targeted, the speedster's body would prioritize healing the damage over anything else, robbing them of the presence of mind they would need to either run away or attack.

"Come with us!" Iris shouts back.

Len centers his legs, which have started shaking, and exhales through his nose. He needs both hands to aim the gun properly - two hands, which leaves none for his crutches; that's why he's been using the braces whenever he's gone out as Captain Cold. Still, all that PT is finally coming in handy: even without crutches, he can stand.

But not for long.

The second he falls back to sit on the bed, his hands will slip, and the beam will drift off target - only by a little, only for a second, but that's all the Man in Yellow will need to escape.

If he tries to leave, he might be able to keep the beam on him until he reaches the door -

But there's one person in the room who can't leave.

"I ain't leaving Mick," he shouts back. "Get out of here! Find a place to hide!"

Even at superspeed, hiding would force the Man in Yellow to look for them - they certainly can't hope to outrun him.

"You get out too!" Mick snaps even as Iris nods jerkily and hurries out, urged on by Thawne. "Boss -"

"I ain't picking something over you again and that's _final_!"

"Damnit, _Len_ -"

Len's legs give out.

The Man in Yellow darts out of the beam, snarling in rage, his face - and it does look like Wells under what little is left of that mask, or the pictures Len's seen of him - still covered in ice and burned by swiftly healing frostbite.

And then there's a swift wind.

Len closes his eyes, expecting to die so quickly that he doesn't have time to question it - or perhaps to be taken to be tortured, if that's more Wells' speed - 

Heh, _speed_.

Wait a second.

He hasn't been moved - his side would've been protesting if he had - and he's not dead, because he feels moderately sure he wouldn't be around to continue sniggering at puns if he was. 

He opens his eyes.

The room is empty.

Wells is gone - 

\- but so is Mick.

"Mick!" Len cries out, even though he knows it's futile. The Man in Yellow has him. 

Wells has his Mick.

"Snart!" Iris cries out, bursting into the room. There are tears of terror and rage streaming down her cheeks. "Snart - he took Eddie! I saw him - the red lightning! He took Eddie!"

"He took Mick, too," Len says, barely able to process it. He just got Mick back - he _just_ fucking got Mick back after nearly losing him to people who hurt Mick because of Len, and here it is, happening all over again.

Mick wouldn't have been a target to the Families if it wasn't for Len, and what he did and who he was.

Mick wouldn't have been a target to the Man in Yellow, if it wasn't for Len's investigation.

Mick -

Mick, who is still _bedridden_ , who is still _hospital-bound_ , who will _die_ if he didn't have the treatment he needed -

Mick is gone.


	18. 18

Barry is watching TV.

Yes, damnit, his boyfriend who he's in love with just left him (rightfully) over crimes he didn't even realize he was committing, he's having to rethink his entire system of morality because clearly the current version isn't up to the task, his foster-dad just got arrested, his new friends aren't talking to him because they're too busy scrambling as the police raid their apartments, he hasn't heard _anything_ from Iris, the man who killed his mom and is probably a Family hitman is still at large and he's way too depressed to do anything about it -

But at least Mel and Sue sure are enjoying stealing bites from those yummy-looking biscuits that are probably a bit under-proofed.

Barry's life might be falling apart, but The Great British Bake-Off will never hurt him.

...yeah, things are bad. 

Barry concedes this, but he also has no idea what he can _do_ about it, so he's just going to sit here and watch television at regular speed like a _normal person_ and, he’s not sure, maybe hold out hope for a sign from above or something.

"Barry!" Iris shouts, bursting in through his apartment door, closely followed by -

"Len?" Barry yelps, sitting straight up and disappearing into his room to put on something _slightly_ sexier than his beloved oversized 'Runaway Dinosaur' shirt and shorts set that Iris got him years ago as a joke. 

He reappears a second later in sweatpants and a button-down, which will just have to do because apparently that's all he has that's clean right now.

Len is here.

Len is -

Len is stealing a spoonful of Barry's Phish Food ice cream that he’s been eating instead of lunch.

"Hey!" Barry exclaims.

" _Seriously_?" Iris says, crossing her arms.

"I need sugar," Len says primly. "Hypoglycemia is a serious issue." 

Iris rolls her eyes.

Len's smirk fades. "Barry, we need your help."

"What happened?" Barry asks at once. Len wouldn't be here for anything less than an absolute crisis - that much was painfully clear by the way things were left between them, with Len rushing out of STAR Labs, pale-faced, and the police showing up to talk to everyone the next day. 

So whatever happened must have been serious.

"Wells took Eddie," Iris says. "And Mick."

"I - Wells?"

"You remember how Ramon theorized that Wells actually _was_ the Man in Yellow rather than simply employing him?" Len asks, looking grim. "We've just confirmed that."

Crap. It’s not that Barry didn’t trust Cisco – even though it is sort of weird that he remembers the day-lost-to-time-travel when no one else does – but the idea of _Wells_ being the Man in Yellow...

Barry’d always thought of Wells as being incredibly kind. A mentor. A trusted friend.

Turns out that was a lie from the very beginning.

"He was blurring his features at first, so we weren’t sure about it at first," Iris says, preempting the question Barry was about to ask. "But he stopped doing that after Len shot him in the face with the cold gun."

After Len –

_What_?!

"You shot Wells in the face with the cold gun?! Wells? Professor Harrison Wells?"

"In my defense, he was A, about to kill us all and B, not recognizable as Wells at the time," Len says dryly. "But yeah, I shot him, Iris and Thawne ran, and then he -" 

Len's voice cuts off suddenly, and he closes his eyes briefly in undisguised pain. 

Barry’s never seen him react to anything like that. Not anything except –

Except Mick.

His best friend. His _Iris_. 

Barry's chest hurts, seeing Len suffer like this. Even after everything Len did, to him and to his friends, even after all the chaos and disaster that's happened...

He's still desperately in love with the man.

"He took Eddie and Mick and disappeared," Iris says, brutal in her practicality. There are tears shining in her eyes, tear-tracks still on her face, but she’s clearly moved beyond the point of crying. She’s on the warpath, and Barry knows exactly how dangerous an enraged Iris West can be. "We still don't know why he only took them -"

"I can only carry two people at top speed," Barry says. "I get stronger when I’m running, I can carry more weight than a normal person, but just as a practical matter I still only have two arms. If he's the same as me -"

"Why not just kill Snart, though?" Iris asks. "He was literally right there."

"Why run up and show me that he's still around, just to rub my face in the fact that he's faster?" Barry asks, feeling bitter. He knows why, now: because he tried to do something, anything, other than running faster and faster. He dared argue back, dared to stand up to Wells over wanting to focus on his work as a CSI, and he’d thought that Wells had accepted it. Sure, maybe not in good grace, but accepted it. Instead, Wells had just decided to dangle the Man in Yellow in front of him like a cat toy – here, have a prize, all you need to do is jump a little bit higher, run a little bit faster and you’ll get it. And it worked, too. "If we know anything about him, it's that he likes to play with people. Ruin their lives. You hurt him; he wants to hurt you. Just killing you wouldn’t be enough – he wants you to suffer."

"That'd explain why he'd take Mick," Len says quietly, his voice heavy. "But - why Thawne? Wouldn't Iris be a better target, if he's ultimately aiming at you?"

"Probably," Barry says, frowning. "I honestly have no clue why he'd take Eddie. Unless -"

"Unless what?" Iris asks.

Barry winces. "Hopefully nothing," he says. "But, it's just - okay, this is kind of weird, but, you see, if anything, trying to get me and Iris together was just about the only thing other than me getting faster that Wells cared about."

“Ugh, _seriously_?” Iris says. “Sorry, Bar, I love you, you know that, but I am just so sick and tired of people trying to make my romantic decisions for me.”

“No, I know, I got the message,” Barry says, smiling crookedly at her. He’s surprised – it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, hearing Iris blithely dismiss the possibility of the two of them together. 

He’s finally accepted it. He’s _finally_ gotten over Iris.

And all it took to do it was to fall in love with a man who broke his heart, and Barry can't even blame him for it. 

"First he targets your mom, then he targets you, and now your love life...sounds like you've got a stalker," Len says. "A creepy, obsessed stalker that moves at super-speed."

"Seems like it," Barry says, making a face. 

"You have to help us figure out what happened, Bar," Iris says. "If the three of us work together, we can find Eddie and Mick, stop Wells, and make sure the Families don't get away with - with whatever it is they're up to!"

Barry looks at Len, who isn't looking at him. "I don't mind helping," he says. "If - Len..?"

"We're not okay," Len says abruptly. "We're not. You still...what you did...Listen, I know I might’ve - reacted in a rather extreme way, yes, but -"

"You were right," Barry says, interrupting. "You were totally right. What we were doing was wrong, and the fact that Wells was encouraging all of us not to think about it is no excuse at all. We're all adults. We should accept the consequences of our actions."

Len seems - surprised, almost. Like he thought Barry would try to defend himself, or deflect, or make excuses. 

Barry won't.

For once in his life, he won't run.

It's the ethical thing to do. It's the sort of thing that someone - that someone Len could be proud of would do.

The sort of someone Barry wants to be.

Len nods, slowly. "Okay," he says. "Let's work together. Let's figure this out." Then he wrinkles his nose. "Fuck, I hate mysteries."

"You're a _detective_!" Iris exclaims.

Barry snickers. He can't help it: her face is just so hilariously offended.

"I became a cop because I like justice," Len tells her crossly. "Not because I like mysteries. Mysteries are pests; they get in the way of justice."

God, Len's so damn cute it hurts sometimes.

Mostly because Barry _had that_ , and then lost it.

"Anyway, back to the main issue," Len says. "We don’t have much time –”

“We don’t? Wait, have we figured out what the Families are doing?”

“No, not quite,” Iris says. “But Eddie and I figured out that the Familes' ‘big day’ is going to go down on Election Day.”

“Wait, _Election Day_? That’s tomorrow!”

“We know,” Len says dryly. “Iris, go to the precinct and find Danvers. Get her up to date and keep going on that Zoom Contracting company, find out where that money is coming from, including whether its income is all Family money, and if so which Family. Check if some of it comes from somewhere else, too – and if it’s paid _out_ any money recently. Bribes, specifically."

"Ask Terri to help you," Barry interjects. "They're a CSI, over at the lab; they're the best forensic accountant in the state."

"Do that," Len agrees. "Danvers also knows my passcode for the cardboard brigade, squeeze 'em for everything you can get. I want to know what’s going on, where, when, how, and right now Wells is our best lead on that. Throw away all discretion; go at it with both barrels. In the meantime, Barry and I'll follow up on the Dibny angle -"

"Wait, Dibny?" Iris asks. "That guy Barry hated so much?"

"Yeah, him," Barry says. "We think he might be acting - or being used, anyway - as a go-between to send messages from Family to corrupt cops. I'm sorry, I don't think I mentioned him to you before – it wasn’t on purpose, I wasn’t hiding it –"

"No, no, it's not that," she says, frowning in thought. "You definitely didn't mention it, but it’s weird. I swear I heard his name recently.”

“You heard his name?” Barry asks, surprised. “Where? Who in the world would be talking about him?”

“They were angry,” Iris says, her nose scrunched up in thought, trying to pull out the memory. 

“Not at the CCPD, then,” Len says. “They tend to be angrier at the people doing the prosecuting than the cops doing the cheating. Think about the context of the memory – where have you been in the last few days?”

“God, I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t been doing _anything_ but police stuff the last few days – I’m staying with Eddie, Wally’s with us, but it wasn’t either of them. And other than the precinct, the only place I’ve been...wait, I know!”

“Well?”

“It was when Eddie and I were doing research in the mayor’s office,” Iris says. “Those dusty old archives – we’d gone to look for more on Zoom Contracting, complaints, records, anything. It was our first stop.”

“The fact that it’s a good place to make out had nothing to do with that being your first stop,” Len says, sounding amused.

“We just got engaged, we’re allowed to prioritize for things like that,” Iris says primly. “But seriously, I remember it now –someone mentioned his name in an angry voice as they walked by the archives room. I remember thinking about how hearing it would’ve made Barry start up his usual rant again if he’d been there.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“The weird thing is, though,” she continues, frowning , “that particular area’s restricted – Eddie only got us in by flashing his badge around. The only people around would’ve been the mayor and his staff. Barry, does this Dibny guy have any connection to the mayor?"

"The _mayor_? No, I don't -" Barry pauses.

That's not quite right, though, is it? When he'd gone over to see Dibny, asking about corruption cases, Dibny initially thought he was looking for stuff about blackmail, and then he’d hidden a folder -

And he'd asked about the mayor.

It clicks.

"Holy _crap_ , guys," Barry says. "I think Dibny might be blackmailing the mayor."

"...well, then," Len says after a long moment, his expression rather perturbed. "Think we'd better go talk to him, then, don't you think?"

"Have fun with that, boys," Iris says, rolling her eyes and heading out the door.

Leaving them alone. Together.

It's suddenly awkward in a way it's never been for them before, the air in the room suddenly fraught with tension.

God, Len is so beautiful - beautiful and right and _not Barry's_.

And it’s all Barry’s fault. 

"Okay," Barry says, breaking the silence. "Want me to run us to Dibny's office? Will you be okay?"

"Haven't torn anything recently," Len says with a shrug, because he’s an idiot who doesn’t take proper care of himself. Barry wants to chastise him, but he can’t; he knows he can’t. Len’s not his to worry about anymore. "So I'll manage. But –”

“But?”

“Maybe put on something slightly more formal first?"

A few super-speed seconds of digging uncover a better set of pants that are clean enough, and then they're off. 

The hallway to Dibny's office is just as grubby as Barry remembers it, though luckily free of Family members.

Len seems unperturbed by their shabby surroundings, but then again his accent makes it clear that he grew up in slums far worse than this neighborhood.

God. Barry wants to ask him about it – about his past, about growing up in the slum, about everything. Was this like what you knew when you were a kid? Better? Worse? How have things changed? Does it hurt you to come here? Or does it feel like climbing back into your worst old rattiest set of pajamas, like coming home even though you know intellectually that it’s awful?

Barry thought he’d have all the time in the world to ask those questions.

Those questions, and more.

He’d dreamed, soft and secret and deep down where he wouldn’t tell anyone about it, that he’d have a whole lifetime to ask those questions.

But no.

Just because Barry’s in love with Len doesn’t mean – doesn’t mean Len feels the same way.

All hope of that’d been extinguished right alongside his trust in Barry.

At least Barry has this much: Len still trusts him enough to work with him. A colleague, an ally, maybe even – one day – a friend again. 

It’s not what Barry wants, not at all; he wants so much more than that. But if this is all Barry can get, then he’ll take it and he’ll never let it go.

He’ll be the sort of man that Len deserves to have as a friend. 

"Any thoughts before we go in?" Barry asks.

"You know Dibny better than me," Len says. "I don’t think I know him at all – he joined the force well after the point where I was officially not on talking terms with any cops except org crime’s undercover people, and he was gone before I got back. You take the lead to start; I’ll jump in if there’s anything I feel I need to add."

Barry nods.

Dibny doesn't do the pretentious chair-swirl when Barry walks in this time, just startles a bit from where he's standing by the window. He has a view of the street, so he's probably just surprised that he didn't see them coming into the building. That seems like the sort of paranoid thing that Dibny would do, watch the street like a creep for oncoming visitors.

Though in this neighborhood, maybe it’s less paranoia and more of a reasonable precaution…

"Allen," Dibny says blankly. 

Then, a second later, his overly-facile face splits into a truly nasty smirk. "Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in. Heard you got yourself suspended, Allen – suspended pending investigation – possibly going to get fired –"

"That isn't important," Barry says impatiently. Yes, there’s a better-than-decent chance he’ll lose his job, maybe even go to jail – unlikely, but only because the CCPD hates imprisoning its own people, and they definitely don’t want to re-open all the cases Barry’s worked on as a CSI. Yes, he knows that’s extremely unfair, but he also knows that’s probably how it’s going to turn out. Yes, Barry’s extremely upset about it, since being a CSI isn’t just a job he got to pay the bills, it’s a job he got because he loves the work, but it _doesn’t matter_. They have the Families to deal with – they have Wells to deal with. He doesn't have time for a stupid rivalry-driven ‘I told you so’ from Dibny of all people. "I need you to tell me everything you know about what the Families have planned."

Dibny's eyes flicker and he flinches, just the slightest bit.

He knows something!

"I don't know anything," he says.

Ugh.

Barry _hates_ this guy.

"We know about what you're doing with the mayor, Dibny," Barry says, crossing his arms. "And we know that messages between the Families and the corrupt people on the police force are being passed through here." 

"They are _not_ ," Dibny says, mirroring Barry. "And even if they were, or even if you did know anything about the mayor that might interest me, what's it to you? I don't have to tell you anything. You're not even a real cop – and anyway you're _suspended_!"

"Oddly enough," Len drawls from where he's hanging back by the door, "that's why I came along."

Dibny twists to look at Len for the first time, scowling. "Who the hell are you?"

"A cop," Len says dryly. "Who's not suspended."

"Yeah, right," Dibny says dismissively. "I know all the cops, every one of them, no matter where or who; it's practically my superpower. And I don't know you, which means you're not a cop."

Len's eyebrows go up as Dibny speaks, his expression incredulous.

Barry can’t blame him – all this time and fuss about people finding out that he’s a cop, and he finally tells someone who doesn’t know and they _don’t believe him_?

Weird.

Len balances his weight on his crutches and reaches into his pocket – actions slow and steady, the way you would around someone who might be afraid you’re pulling a gun – and he pulls out his ID. He's holding it awkwardly, suggesting that he's not yet accustomed to being called upon to show it to people.

Probably because he doesn't actually bother arresting non-police people for stuff, and all the police already know who he is.

It’s definitely a real ID, though, and Dibny’s an ex-cop; he’ll recognize that much.

"As you can see," Len says, waving the ID around a bit. "I am, in fact, a cop. Captain Leonard Snart, at your service."

Dibny goes dead white.

Barry wasn't expecting that. Judging by the surprised tilt of Len's head, neither was he, though he's probably hiding his reaction better than Barry is.

"And it's clear you've heard my name before," Len observes.

"I - er - that is - there isn't - aren't you _dead_?"

"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated," Len says, starting to frown. "Who told you about me, anyway? Your friends at the precinct wouldn't have any reason to mention me – and certainly not by name."

"Uh, no, that is – I mean – they don't – _I_ didn't - "

"Oh, but you did, didn't you," Len says, his voice dropping into that calm, cool voice he gets when he's really pissed off. "That's why you were hoping I was dead, wasn't it?"

Barry looks between Len and Dibny, confused. Len was calm three seconds ago, and now he’s suddenly furious? Just because Dibny knew his name?

He knows that Len’s super upset about what happened with Mick, but this reaction seems outsized even for a particularly emotional Len.

So it has to be something Dibny said. But what?

"I don't get it," he says hesitantly. He doesn’t really want to get in between Len and Dibny right now; Len is really glaring death at the guy. Not that Barry objects, of course, if you’d asked him how he’d rank Len trying to murder Ralph Dibny with his eyes as a mental image, he’d probably have put it somewhere in his top twenty most wanted – but he doesn’t like being out of the loop. "What did he do?"

"'I know all the cops,'" Len mimics Dibny, his voice hard. "'It's practically my superpower.' Really is, isn't it? And it's one you've had for a while now, ain't it, Dibny? For _quite_ a while now."

He takes a few steps forward, his crutch making an ominous thudding noise as he moves. 

Dibny flinches away before him, scrabbling backwards towards his desk, then past it, to the window – backing up until he can’t back away any more.

"And you like to talk, don't you, Dibny?" Len continues, his expression more actively malevolent than Barry's ever seen it. "You like to talk about your little 'superpower' - maybe even show off a little -"

"I had to!" Dibny bursts out. "I had no choice! You don’t understand! I'd gotten fired from the force, thanks to Barry here, and after the first year or two, I realized that my private investigation business wasn't paying the bills - people didn't believe I had what it took to get them what they needed – I needed to _show_ them –"

"Oh, and I bet you showed them all right," Len says. "Only way to build your new business, wasn’t it? Your new business selling information. But people don’t just agree to let people be information brokers – oh no – you have to give them a little taste of what you can offer – a freebie – something you know that no one else does, something valuable, something you don’t really care too much about – and that’s just what you did –"

"I didn't have a choice! They wouldn't have believed me about anything if I didn't know things! Secret things! Cop things!"

"Like the identity of one of Central's undercover cops," Len says, and suddenly Barry gets it.

" _You_ did it?" he exclaims, horrified. He’s never liked Dibny at the best of times, but it’d never even occurred to him as a possibility. It should have, he realizes that now – Dibny’d all but told him when they talked, all his boasting about information and friends in the precinct and things that he knew because he cozied up to people while calling Barry an anti-social idiot. He’d learned things, all right; things like Len’s name, things like what Len did. An undercover cop. Yes, that was the perfect bit of information to sell out to show that you meant business – as long as you didn’t care what happened to the guy you spilled the beans on. "You're the one who leaked Len's identity to the Families? You got him tortured and shot and his best friend nearly murdered - to _drum up more business_?"

"Well, when you put it that way, it sounds kinda bad -"

Len takes another step forward. His face is very, very level, very calm. His eyes are not. 

"Oh God please don't kill me!" Dibny yelps.

“I’ve been looking for you for a while now,” Len says conversationally. “I've had some things to say to you, you see. Now, while I wasn’t expecting you to just drop into my lap, I’m not one to say no when an opportunity presents itself...”

He takes another step, his hand dropping down to the cold gun by his side.

The one that’s fatal to normal people.

Barry takes a step forward, concerned. "Len, listen, I know you're angry, but you're an ethical guy, okay?" he says, holding out his hands. "You don't want to do this. You'd have to turn in your badge and arrest yourself. Let's just arrest him instead, okay? Nice and legal. Okay?"

Another step.

Len's not listening. Of course he's not; this is the man who destroyed his life, destroyed Mick's life, the man responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since the beginning. 

The man Len's been hunting all this time.

The man _Captain Cold_ has been hunting all this time.

"Listen to Allen, please, just arrest me, don’t let him kill me," Dibny babbles. "Listen, Snart, you - you don't want to do this, really! I know things, I know lots of things - I know what the Families are up to, I can tell you that, you want that, right, and in exchange you give me immunity for the leak -"

"No," Len says firmly, and that's about when Barry realizes that Len is totally playing Dibney right now. His voice is intimidating, yes, but he's not about to cross the lines he's set for himself. He's just dealing with the fact that they have an incipient crisis on their hands and Dibny is withholding information that could mean life or death for their city. "No deal. You talk, you talk _now_ , and maybe, _if_ your intel's good enough, I'll arrest you."

"What good's that do me?" Dibny protests. “You’re going to arrest me anyway!”

Len bares his teeth. "Well, alternatively, other option's that I don't listen to Barry here and I _don’t_ arrest you. You don’t want that option. Trust me."

"Oh," Dibny squeaks, his voice suddenly gone higher-pitched. "Right. In that option I die, right?"

"No," Len says. "In that option I call up the CCPD, tell all your buddies that you're a would-be cop-killer, and have _them_ arrest you."

"...shit."

"Limited time offer," Len says. "Talk. Now."

"Listen, as a preliminary thing, I want to be clear that I've got nothing to do with the Families," Dibny says. "I don't! I've never worked with them, I've never dealt with them; at most some of their thugs come by and do some stuff down the hall, that's it. I'm not involved!"

"Yeah, right," Barry says with a snort. "You're not blackmailing the mayor for them?"

"I wouldn't! Not for the Families!" Dibny exclaims. "I'm not a Family cop, you know; I never was. And it's not _much_ blackmail, not really, just some pictures of him cheating that he doesn’t want to get out so close to Election Day - and I really only do it when my landlord suddenly demands I pay the back rent -"

"Of course," Barry says with a sigh, figuring it out. It makes sense. Why involve more people than you have to? "If you’re doing it that predictably enough, then they don't actually need you to be involved. If they know that you're blackmailing the mayor, then they can blackmail him with the fact that he's being blackmailed - and since they almost certainly either own the building or have something on your landlord, they can control when you press him. You're just an unwitting tool."

"Yes! Exactly! Unwitting! That means I'm not working for the Families!"

"I'll grant you that much, sure," Len says with a sneer. He looks at Dibny like he’s something he just stepped in. "But that doesn't change the fact that you fancy yourself some sorta information broker. Well, give us the information, now, or else you'll be the one who's broke _n_."

Barry will not laugh. Barry _will not_ laugh.

Barry cannot believe Len actually just made that pun.

More to the point, he can't believe it could possibly work as a threat, except apparently it does because Dibny starts talking.

"It's the fact that they're failing," Dibny says, voice hushed as if to convey the importance of the information he’s telling them – or possibly just afraid someone will overhear them. "The Families - between your undercover work and the Feds' inroads, their power is in serious decline. They're too risky. No one wants to work for them and get killed. And if they can't get people to work for them, fear them, things like that - well, with that gone, they don't have as much influence over anything. They want that influence back, and they have a plan to get it." 

“Stop running out the time,” Len says, his eyes flickering very briefly to Barry, who wants to kick him and kiss him at the same time. Now is not the time for puns! “What’s the plan?”

“They’ve got a deal set up,” Dibny says. “A big one. The biggest deal. I don’t know how, but they’ve managed to get in contact with the military –”

“The _military_?” Barry exclaims, alarmed. Sure, he's had some brief encounters with them – after Bette Sans Souci died, her meta powers turning inwards to kill her – but he’d forgotten about them right afterwards.

It’d never seemed like a big deal, and Wells had dismissed all of their concerns.

Wells.

Of course.

If he’s in on this whole deal with the Families – and he has to be – then of course he’d make sure they didn’t think too much about the local military, the ones who thought it was a good idea to take someone with meta powers they barely understood and try to use her as a weapon.

Not unlike what Wells was trying to groom Barry into.

God, he was such an idiot.

“The local guy, Eiling; all reports say that he’s a nutcase,” Dibny says. “Military, yeah, but he’s involved in all sorts of weird science stuff, too. Normally the Families don’t go anywhere near military stuff in the best of times – they know when they’re outgunned – but somehow one of their people got in contact with the military and started brokering a deal –”

“Someone legit,” Len murmurs. “Trustworthy. A prominent scientist with military connections, maybe.”

Wells.

It has to be.

“So that’s the deal,” Dibny says. “The Families are going to supply the military with all the black market goods they want – including people to experiment on, _especially_ people who’ve been affected by the Accelerator explosion – and the military’s going to feed them back enough military-grade guns and cash that they’re going to be able to run this city the way they used to.”

“Shit,” Barry says with feeling. There’s no other word for it. Especially if Wells planned the whole time to throw the metas he'd had Barry capture in as part of the deal...things are just getting worse and worse. 

“The military money’s going to get laundered through city government, but it’s going to go to all the corrupt guys – there’ll be enough to go around,” Dibny continues. “That’s helping them get it through, but it’s not enough, they’re needing to pull out all the stops to make sure no one blows this deal up. They’ve got pressure on politicians no one even suspected they had pressure on, to get this whole deal moving – we’re not just talking the mayor; we’re talking the governor, we’re talking the cops –”

“The Commissioner?” Len asks.

“Probably, I don’t know,” Dibny says with a helpless shrug. “The thing is, they can’t just make this deal and be done with it – they know the military’ll just wash their hands of them the second any of it comes to light. So they came up with this plan to make sure that no one’ll be able to back out at the last second: an actual deal, signed on paper, with a videotape of the signing. All the big guys in the city with their names on one document –”

“Making sure they don’t back out – after all, if they don’t hang together, they’ll most definitely hang separately,” Len says.

“Seriously, Len?” Barry says.

“What?” Dibny asks. “Wait, was that a _musical_ quote? 1776?”

“It’s a Benjamin Franklin quote,” Barry says. “Still sort of inappropriate.”

“To be fair, I was in fact quoting the musical, and anyway it’s entirely appropriate because after a certain point it’s gotta be either laughter or tears and I don’t got time for the latter,” Len says. “That’s why this is on Election Day, isn’t it? Because everyone in the state’s gonna be in Central and no one’s gonna question it – and all of that talk about logistics, that’s the Families working out how to escort all the relevant people to this big meet-up without anyone noticing that all the bigwigs in town are all gone at the same exact time.”

“Exactly,” Dibny says.

“If you knew all this, why didn’t you _tell_ someone?” Barry demands.

“Tell _who_?” Dibny shoots back. “I know they’ve got people in the cops, they’ve got people in the government, they’ve got judges, DAs, everything, and to be perfectly honest I don’t exactly want to go up against the Families, okay?! People who do that get shot!”

“Not as much as they used to,” Len says. “A situation that they’re now trying to reverse. Barry, we’re leaving.”

“Wait, what?” Dibny exclaims. “You’re just – leaving?”

“Do you have any more information?” Len asks. “Like where they’re going to meet to do the signing?”

“Uh, no, that’s all I know.”

“That’s what I thought. Since unlike you we intend to actually do something about this, we’re leaving.”

“But what are you going to do about _me_?” Dibny protests.

“Of course,” Barry hisses. “Always thinking about yourself –”

“Yeah, well, ‘myself’ seems pretty damn important right about now! I just blabbed on the Families to the cops! I want protection! I want to be surrounded by cops! I want -”

“Fine,” Len says. 

“– to be...wait, really?” Dibny looks incredulous at Len’s agreement.

Barry can’t blame him; he’s feeling pretty incredulous himself. Dibny gets police protection? For _that_?

“Oh, absolutely,” Len says. “You should go to the CCPD right now. Or better yet, get any trustworthy friends you can find and then go to the CCPD. They’re going to need all hands on deck pretty soon.”

Dibny blinks. Barry blinks. 

Len shakes his head at both of them, his expression gone grim.

“This is Central City,” he says. “The Families walk the line, remember? Everyone knows they’re there, but everyone that our city thinks is important thinks they’re not going to be affected personally by it. Oh, sure, there’s some corrupt cops, some corrupt politicos, anyone elected out of a slum district, we all know that, but we shrug it off because it’s just how Central City works – and anyway, we know who they are, so we can just avoid them.”

“But that’s not what this is,” Barry says, a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach. “This is – this is corruption on an unimaginable scale. This is everybody finding out that everything is a lie: their democracy, their police, their laws...”

“People are going to riot,” Dibny says, his face pale. “The whole city's going to go totally fucking crazy.”

“Yeah,” Len says. “They are. And once I call the Feds to come in, the Families are going to lash out like the cornered rats they are.”

“You can’t do that,” Dibny hisses. “If you bring in the Feds, it’ll be absolute chaos –”

“There’s no choice,” Len says. “You want to be surrounded by police? Go to the CCPD and help out. You want to hide in your basement until it’s all over? Do that, if that’s what you want to. Barry?”

“Right. Leaving.” 

Barry follows Len out the door, sliding it shut behind him so that Dibny, standing in his office and gaping at them, won’t see him run at superspeed once they get to the end of the hallway. 

Once outside, though, he looks at Len. “He’s right, you know,” he says. “There’ll be riots, and it’ll only be worse if the Feds come in. If the Families think they’re dealing with some sort of existential crisis, they’ll pull out all the stops to protect themselves. Every person they have pressure on, every person who’s ever taken an unwise loan, every shopkeeper that ever paid them protection money...they’ll call them all in to fight for them.”

“I know,” Len says. “But we have to stop them from making this deal. And if the CCPD’s compromised, it has to be the Feds.”

“They’ll make a mess of things.”

“Probably,” Len agrees. “I know a bunch of them, though; worked closely with them. They trust me. If I say they have to work with the CCPD – the good, not-corrupt parts of the CCPD – they’ll bitch and whine but they’ll do it.”

Barry nods. “And it’s better than the Families,” he says, thinking back to his dad’s stories of the older days, when he was a kid, back when Central City had been a real Family haven. Murders on the train lines, police looking the other way except for when the ones on the take were assaulting people who tried to fight back against Family influence, drugs sold openly on street corners, violence and crime everywhere...

They can’t let that happen.

“I’ll call my guys,” Len says, pulling out his phone. “You call Iris. We need to make this public.”

“Public? The riots –” 

“I know,” Len says grimly. “Publicizing it will only make the riots happen faster. I know. I’m planning for it.”

“Planning – but _why_?”

“Because we don’t have time to do otherwise. Even if I call the Feds, mobilization takes forever and Election Day’s _tomorrow_. As it is, the Feds won’t be able to pull in enough guys to properly fight the Families at full force. We need the citizens of Central City – even if the only thing they can do is create such a mess that no one in the Families will be able to escape.”

Barry swallows hard, imagining his beautiful city in flames, knowing that these types of riots can kill people, but he nods. There’s no other way of stopping the Families. The people have to know.

The people have a _right_ to know.

“One last thing,” he says hesitantly.

Len raises his eyebrows. He’s already dialing. 

“The Feds can do a lot,” Barry says, then swallows. “But they can’t defeat the Reverse Flash.”

No one can.

Not even Barry.

He’s not fast enough. But if the Reverse Flash is Wells, then maybe he was never going to be. 

But Barry’s the only one who even stands a chance.

He has to try.

Len pauses, considering.

“You’re right,” he says after a long moment. “They can’t. They’re not equipped for something like that; he’ll plow right through them.”

Barry winces. 

Another moment of silence.

“Okay,” Len finally says. “Okay. After we alert the Feds and Iris, you and I, we’ll go stop him ourselves.”

“Ourselves? But we don’t even know where he _is_!”

“Of course we do,” Len says. “Now that I’ve had a moment to think about it, it’s obvious. I know where he’s hiding, and I know where he’s keeping Thawne and Mick.”

“Where?”

“STAR Labs,” Len says. “Right in the part that was hand-made – literally – by Zoom Contracting.”

Hand-made by Wells.

By the Reverse Flash.

By the Man in Yellow.

Of course.

“I know just where to go,” Barry says.


	19. 19

Len is so far from having a good day, he can't even begin to quantify it. It's like something out of one of his worst nightmares.

(There had _better_ not be a meta with the ability to turn nightmares into reality, because if there is and they have anything to do with this, Len is going to _throttle_ them and he won't even be sorry. Well, maybe a little sorry.)

But seriously, he’s having trouble picking the worst thing that’s currently happening to him.

Mick is gone - hurt, kidnapped, probably dying from lack of hospital access, trapped at the mercy of some superhuman monster that likes to play with people before he kills them. 

Trapped in a room knowing there’s nowhere to go, just like Len was.

If Len thinks about that for too long, he’s going to crack, and he _can’t_ crack, not when Mick's counting on him, so he can’t think about it.

But if he’s not thinking about Mick, then he’s thinking about the fact that the Families are on the cusp of closing a deal that will give them fresh blood and power and vigor, thereby undoing all the work he's so painstakingly accomplished with twenty years undercover.

Or the fact that the police force he gave his life to, his friends, his family, his _truth_ to, is corrupt beyond all belief, beyond even his admittedly negatively biased views of it.

That the city he loves is a ticking time bomb and he's one of the few people who knows it.

That Barry is still fucking perfect.

Okay, that last one is probably not at the same level as the others, but damnit, it feels like it _should_ be.

Barry has no right being so damn wonderful. He committed horrible crimes!

...which he accepted, taking responsibility for and accepting the consequences of. He didn't make excuses, he didn't try to explain himself, he just looked Len square in the eyes and said: You're right, I was wrong, I will never let it happen again, I will do better, but just saying so doesn't change the fact that what I did was wrong and I will pay what I must for it.

And he _was_ manipulated by Wells, who's apparently good enough to play politics with the military and the Families _and_ the Central City government, all at once, and that's _without_ considering how he tricked Barry into seeing him as a surrogate father figure, utilizing his apparently extensive stalking (including, apparently, cameras in Barry's bedroom which really is the stuff of nightmares) to figure out the best ways to get under Barry’s skin. 

Under the circumstances, really, one could see many of Barry’s actions as being taken under a form of emotional duress...

Damnit.

Mick was right, as he so often is. 

Barry really isn't corrupt. Barry's trying his best and making mistakes (if very bad ones) in the process. But deep down, Barry’s still a good man.

And Len is head-over-fucking-heels in love with him.

A realization that helpfully arrived _after_ he destroyed Barry's life and those of his closest friends and family.

He fully expects that this has almost certainly ruined his chances to ever get Barry’s forgiveness, even after Barry serves whatever time he must. Acceptance, tolerance, understanding, maybe, but nothing else.

Nothing like love.

Great.

Way to go, Len. Way to fucking go.

At least Len’s still in charge of the investigation in some part – really, he ought to have recused himself as soon as he’d processed what Hartley had told him, given his emotional involvement with one of the targets, but he was just so upset that he utterly forgot – so there's a chance he might be able to present evidence of what mitigating factors exist to explain Barry’s actions, and hope that that's enough to convince someone impartial to take pity.

The alternative – Barry's spirit getting stamped out of him by the brutal realities of prison, or indelibly tainted by a quiet and unethical dismissal designed to avoid having to re-open his cases – isn’t worth thinking about.

So he won’t.

Len’s gotten very good at not thinking about things.

At least he has now: this wonderful, awful interlude where they're working together, a unified front, the way Len wishes they still were. 

The way they were before Len screwed everything up because he just couldn’t help his knee-jerk instinct to assume the worst in people and refuse to listen to any explanation they might have. If only he'd confronted Barry in private, maybe...

Still, if this little bit of teamwork is all Len can get, he'll take it.

Of course, despite his confident words to Barry, actually getting everything into action and going to STAR Labs to defeat Wells and rescue Mick and Thawne isn't as easy as just saying that they’ll do it.

Len has a time and a half getting the Feds on board, but twenty years of being one of their most reliable local guys pays its dividends and they agree to come with whatever resources they can spare, which on such short notice – _the day before, really, Snart, you getting lax on us?_ – isn’t much but will have to do. Len puts his contacts in touch with Singh at the CCPD and Cecile Horton at the District Attorney’s office, the only two he personally trusts to not be on a Family payroll, to work out the business of getting warrants and putting together an actionable plan for how to deal with what’s coming.

Unfortunately, getting in touch with the CCPD means that the CCPD, leaky boat that it is, knows that something big is going down.

There’s no way to avoid it, but Len didn’t spent his years undercover twiddling his thumbs, either. 

“Singh, I want you to go for a walk with someone and mention to them that they’ve got to keep it real hush-hush, but the Feds are getting involved ‘cause someone’s threatening a terrorist attack on Election Day,” Len instructs. He’s getting annoyed that he’s still on the phone while Barry’s already finished up making plans with Iris, called in Ramon and Snow to go help the CCPD with gadgets and triage for potential injuries respectively, and is now standing around and is, in fact, twiddling his thumbs.

And, to add insult to injury, he didn’t even use superspeed. 

“Yes, I know, the cover story won’t last past impact,” he adds impatiently when Singh protests. “That ain’t the point. The point is that we don’t know who in the department is on the take and who ain’t, and that means we tell _all_ of ‘em the cover story in an attempt to keep the Families from panicking before the Feds can show up with RICO warrants. Just drop the story publicly, then keep going with it in private until everyone’s convinced that’s the reason for the time being.”

There’s more arguing on the now-conference call line.

“No, we’re _not_ getting clearance from the Commissioner,” Len says. “Not till we’re sure he’s clean. Listen, he gave me free clearance to recruit as many people as I wanted to my Weird Things task force, right? And basically no mandate? I’m recruiting your entire precinct, it can go under my name, it’s fine – yes, I’m aware that it’ll blow up in my face if this intel’s wrong, I don’t care, I’m willing to take the risk.”

That convinces a good few people. Amazing what the opportunity to cover your ass will convince people to do.

After a bit more insistence, they finally agree to accept his idea and to implement it in just the way he proposed, and then they move on to debating mechanics – where to put up barricades to help reduce damage if there are, as expected, riots, explained away as preparations for a potential panicked response to the ‘terrorist attack’, how many resources they need to divert to reinforce Iron Heights to ensure there aren’t break-outs in the meantime, etc.

Len waits a few more minutes and, when he’s pretty sure they don’t need him anymore, says, “In the meantime, I’m going to go deal with an outstanding issue –”

Immediate protests.

Goddamnit, people, you’re adult policemen! Do your goddamn jobs! Without Len holding your hand the entire time!

“Are you done yet?” Barry asks hopefully.

"You know what, yes," Len says. "Fuck this. Let's go. _Yes_ , I’m hanging up now – no, you can’t call me _back_ , I’m going to mute my phone the second after I hang up, I don’t _care_ – listen, if I survive what I’m about to go do, I promise I’ll sign off on all of this minutiae and if I’m dead, just blame whatever you do on me. I ain’t gonna care, I’ll be dead. And right now, I don’t know which one of ‘em’s a better option!”

He hangs up.

“Sometimes I wish we still had flip-phones,” Barry says nonsensically, but it makes sense when he adds, “I feel like it would have been more satisfying to slam something closed or down in the hanger or something, rather than just angrily stabbing the ‘end call’ button.”

“Very likely,” Len says, and then his phone rings again.

He lifts it up to throw it down on the ground, only for Barry to flash it out of his hands before he can. “I’m gonna turn off your phone,” Barry says wisely. "It's clearly stressing you out."

"Mick is missing and maybe dead, the Families are going to destroy my city, lots of people are gonna die, and even the police I trust not to be corrupt are being pests," Len says, scowling. Barry hands him back his phone with the setting firmly on ‘mute’, which helps a little. "I think I’ve gone beyond stress."

"Where we're going, we don't need neurotransmitters."

Len pauses. "We're in the middle of a crisis and you’re paraphrasing Back to the Future?"

"...maybe?"

Stop being perfect.

"Right," Len says instead. "Let’s find a private corner and you can take us to STAR Labs. When we get there, if you see Mick and Thawne -"

"Don't you dare say that I'm to prioritize getting them out," Barry cuts him off. "I can only carry two people, and I'm not leaving you alone."

"Barry -"

"You can't defeat him. _I_ barely stand a chance."

"I have the cold gun –"

"He's a _speedster_. You got one over on him the last time because he wasn’t expecting it, but now that he is, you'll never get the chance to use it."

"It doesn't _matter_ ," Len hisses. He knows that. He knows that all too well. But ultimately, in the end, it doesn’t matter. They still have to try. "Barry, please. When we get there, you have to listen to me, okay? I'm not going to say you have to prioritize them, we'll make a game-time decision on that depending on the circumstances, but I have to trust that you'll listen to me."

For some reason, that makes Barry pause. "Okay," he says. "Okay. You can trust me. I'll listen to you."

"Even if I order you take them out and leave me behind?"

"Even then. But we have to _try_ to get everyone out before we resort to that, okay?"

"Deal." Len tries on a smirk. “I don’t intend to let Wells have the last word – besides, didn’t you hear? I’ve got paperwork to do.”

“Just so you know, that conversation doesn’t actually give me a lot of confidence in your desire to survive this,” Barry says dryly, because he knows Len pretty well, but he runs them to STAR Labs anyway.

Despite the fact that the sun is rapidly setting around them, almost all of STAR Labs’ lights have been shut off, likely because Ramon wasn’t around to turn them on, lending the building an eerie, deserted feeling.

It's "almost all" because once they walk through the main doors, they see that it's not entirely true that the building is deserted – the lights in the base of the Accelerator itself, the very core of STAR Labs, are still on. 

“Wow,” Barry says. “So, everyone who thinks this is a trap, say ‘aye’.”

“Aye,” Len says. “Sadly, we’re going in anyway.”

“Should I pick up my Flash suit?” Barry asks. “It’s in the main lobby, and it could offer some extra protection –”

“No, don’t. Ramon made that, and it lives here; Wells could’ve tampered with it at any time.”

Barry makes a face. “Yeah, point. I’ve seen some of the stuff Cisco can do remotely with that thing; I don’t want to get trapped or lit on fire or something like that.” 

He still looks wistful, though, so Len adds, “If we survive here, you can get him to make you a new one. Ramon, that is; it doesn’t seem like Wells took him into his confidence.”

Barry nods, looking a bit cheered. “Stop saying ‘if’,” he advises. “We’re going to survive. Better, we’re going to rescue everyone.”

Determined optimism is a good look on Barry.

Everything is a good look on Barry.

(Barry's beautiful.)

God, Mick was right -

He can't think about Mick.

Mick, who was torn away from the hospital equipment he still needs to _live_. Who could already be gone, dying a torturous death of sepsis or an infection or even just an inability to keep all his body functioning...

He can’t think about Mick.

“Let’s go,” he says, and makes his way into the Accelerator. 

It’s not even a surprise to see Wells waiting patiently for them down on the Accelerator’s floor, a door pulled open from the floor to reveal a ladder undoubtedly leading into a secret basement room. 

Len assumes that’s where Mick and Thawne are being kept.

Wells is wearing the yellow suit with the hood pushed back off his face. It looks exactly like Barry’s Flash suit, only in reverse colors and with a lightning bolt facing the other direction. 

Creepy stalker.

Len wonders if Barry’s suit was always designed to be the opposite of Wells’, and if so, what that was supposed to signify. 

“Take us down,” Len tells Barry. “Fast.”

He grits his teeth through the run, even though, as always, his back and leg protest the movement. It’s fine, though; he’s prepared. He can’t show weakness right now.

He's always been good at ignoring pain to avoid showing weakness.

“Mr. Snart,” Wells says. “Mr. Allen – no. _Barry_. Welcome. I’ve been expecting you for some time now.”

“What can you say,” Len drawls. “Sometimes I can be a bit – slow.”

Barry, who was standing as tense as wire string and almost undoubtedly working himself into an anxious frenzy that would do nothing but make him less capable of thinking through his actions before he did them, audibly snorts at that, relaxing into a more comfortable stance. 

Len knows Barry pretty well by now, too. 

“Indeed you are, Captain Cold,” Wells says. “Slowing things down is rather your specialty, isn’t it?”

Len isn’t impressed with Wells right now. “You realize that’s a precinct nickname, right? And I’m pretty sure you ain’t a cop.”

“In my time, you are known almost universally by your chosen appellation,” Wells says. “I’d start adjusting now, if I were you.”

“In your time?” Barry asks. "What - do you mean that you're -"

No way.

No _fucking_ way.

"Oh yes," Wells says, and smiles. It's a very creepy and intimidating smile. "It’s true. I'm from the future."

Len shifts to lean more of his weight on one crutch, pulling it in tight against his body for better balance, and raises his other hand into the air like a schoolboy.

"...do you have a question, Mr. Snart?" Wells says, his voice a little strangled, his creepy smile gone crooked with confusion. Probably wasn't expecting Len’s infantile behavior, but in his defense Wells is clearly setting up for a nice lecturing monologue, so it seemed appropriate. 

Barry just has his eyes closed like he's trying to keep himself from kicking Len and his lips pressed tight to keep himself from laughing.

"How far in the future?" Len asks. "Are we talking one day? One week? One year? Ten years? A hundred? A thousand? Has the sun exploded yet?"

"I - no? Why would the sun have exploded?"

"Ain't it supposed to do that in a billion years or so?" Len frowns at him. "You're a scientist, don't you know that?"

"He's a _particle physicist_ , Len," Barry says, sounding long-suffering but also highly amused. "You don't have to take astronomy courses to get a degree in that. He's not some sort of all-around mad scientist from a novel or television show or something. Besides, time travel we know is real; multidisciplinary studies is just implausible."

"Fine, fine," Len says, even though as a non-scientist that sounds highly dubious to _him_. "The question still stands - are we talking _real_ time, or is he just being really pretentious about having come back about a week or so?"

"I traveled back a thousand years to find the Flash," Wells snaps. "And when I did, I discovered that he wasn't _worthy_ of the honors history had bestowed upon him! I was _alone_ , Mr. Snart; the only one in my era like me, the only one gifted with these powers, and yet when I sought out someone who could understand, he rejected my friendship -"

"Rejecting a crazy murderous fanboy," Len says. "Can't imagine why he did that."

Wells scoffs. "The people I kill here now have been dead for centuries to me, Mr. Snart. They were insignificant to the timeline; it makes no difference."

"Makes something of a difference to them," Len says. "Lemme guess the rest, yeah? You got powers - maybe you even gave yourself powers, after hearing about what the Flash could do from your history books - and then you realized that it's too damn easy to be the only speedster around. So you found a way to go back to the only place you knew you'd find another one, 'cept you're a waste of space personality-wise, a self-absorbed asshole with delusions of grandeur, so when Barry here didn't immediately give you all the attention you wanted, you decided you hated him and that you were gonna kill him. Except for you, it wasn't enough to just kill him, 'cause then he'd still be alive for you, wouldn't he? Not like those other, insignificant people - no, you needed to wipe him outta history. So you went back to when he was just an insignificant little kid. Something like that, yeah? Stop me if I got anything wrong."

"Very clever, Mr. Snart," Wells says. He looks like he's just bitten into a lemon. Probably wasn't expecting Len to steal his thunder like that. Pity for him that Len’s actually read a book or two in his time, and he likes scifi. God, what a cliché. "Unnecessarily editorial, but right on the important points."

"That's why you killed her?" Barry asks, blankly, numbly. Another dagger in his heart, courtesy of Wells - was there no way this man would stop hurting him? "Because - because of me?"

"You were my target, Barry, yes," Wells says. His voice is kindly, almost paternal, if you ignore the batshit crazy stuff spilling from his mouth. "Your future self stopped me, stealing you away and saving you, and I killed her in anger. But it was my good fortune that I didn't succeed - killing your mother was enough to derail your future and stop you from being the Flash. But it was only then that I realized: without you to inspire me, I would never have obtained my own powers. My access to the Speed Force was cut off, and I was trapped in this primitive era - and my only way back was _you_ , Barry. I need you. Only you will be fast enough to help me use the Accelerator to open the time portal I need to get back home."

"That's why you wanted me to get faster," Barry says, his eyes fixed on Wells much like a man confronted by a venomous snake. "As soon as possible. That's why - but why in the world would you think I'd help you? Especially now? _Why?_ " 

"Because, Barry, I can help you fix it," Wells says, his eyes avid. "The same speed that will enable me to return to my era will help _you_ go back to when you need - to stop me from killing your mother at all - to erase my mistake, that caused you so much pain -"

"You know what, I don't believe you," Len announces.

"You - _what_?!"

"I don't think you killed her."

"I _beg your pardon_?!"

"You're a speedster, Barry's a speedster," Len says with a shrug. "Who says the _real_ Man in Yellow couldn't've been a third guy? You might just be claiming credit."

Wells looks irritated beyond all belief. Barry is just staring at Len in total disbelief. Lots of belief going around here.

"What?" Len says. "He's got a nice story - ooooh, I'm from the fuuuuture, how narratively satisfying - but no proof. Why couldn't he be taking advantage of someone else's crime to get what he wants? It's not like he knows any details about the murder that only the murderer would know or something -"

"I murdered Nora Allen in her own living room," Wells snarls. "With a stainless steel knife measuring approximately eight inches, taken from the kitchen - the second drawer on the counter, the third one down the right side of the knife block, knocking down several pans that were hanging above as I did - and then I stabbed her in the thorax between the seventh and eighth rib, using enough force to cause traumatic bruising throughout -"

He stops abruptly. And then he starts chuckling.

"Oh, very clever indeed, Mr. Snart," he says, his voice soft and menacing. "Always thinking ahead, aren't you? I assume you're recording this conversation?"

"My phone's uploading to a cloud stream right now," Len confirms cheerfully. "Scattering the evidence onto a dozen different servers all around the world - none of which you'll be able to track, being a particle physicist and not a computer engineer. Thanks, though; that'll make proving Barry's dad's innocence a heck of a lot easier."

Barry looks touched.

"Besides," Len says, "your plan won't work and you know it."

Wells scowls at him. "And why not, exactly?"

"Because you know very well that I made Barry promise me he wouldn't go back and change significant events in the past," Len says. "I've got some mistakes of my own that I need to confront and accept, and knowing there was a way to reverse 'em was too easy. So I made him swear." He shrugs. "Barry's a bit of a liar, don't get me wrong, but once he promises something, he sticks to it."

Wells looks even _more_ lemon-faced, probably because he's spent significant time with Barry these past few months and knows that what Len's saying is, in fact, true.

Barry's a stickler for his promises, even if he lies like a scarlet-and-gold Aladdin-style rug when confrontation is in the air.

Len's pretty sure that Wells already knew all of this, though, which means he's just posturing - and still has cards left to play.

"Well, then," Wells says, and sure enough he doesn't actually seem surprised by the revelation. "It appears we are at something of an impasse. Unless you're willing to release Mr. Allen from his promise?"

"Nope," Len says. "Sorry. And yes, before you start, I included the event of my death in the things he ain't allowed to change. So that's my last word on the subject."

"Luckily, it isn't mine," Wells says, and smirks. "I heard you, you see, in the hospital - very touching, confessing your love for Mr. Allen -"

"His _what_?!" Barry blurts out.

Great.

Thanks, Wells. 

"- but you also made something else very clear," Wells says. "You vowed that you'd never pick anything over Mr. Rory ever again, didn't you?"

"You stole him from a hospital bed," Len says bitterly. "One attaching him to things he needed to _live_. Given that he's probably already dead now, what exactly are you offering me? A redo where you don't take him?"

"Oh no, Mr. Snart -"

Wells blurs, and suddenly Mick is there - on his knees, his arms bound before him, a gag in his mouth - but he's alive.

He's _alive_.

He's –

Noticeably less injured? 

Still burned, yes, the burn scars still ugly across his neck and his shoulders and chest beneath the ill-fitting STAR Labs sweatshirt Wells put him in, but he's breathing on his own and he's not bleeding and his muscle tone looks vastly improved. 

He looks like he could almost be - okay.

"One of the many advantages of future technology, Mr. Snart," Wells says. "When I took Mr. Rory - admittedly, more in the interest of tormenting you than in preparation for this moment, but waste not, want not - I realized swiftly that he would soon expire if a number of his more serious injuries were not resolved. And so: I did."

Len swallows.

Mick.

Mick, alive, _better_ \- and probably about to be murdered by a speedster.

Well, two outta three ain't bad.

"And so I offer you a deal, Mr. Snart," Wells says. "You may love Mr. Allen, but you also love Mr. Rory. Which one do you love more?"

"Why'd you take Thawne?" Len asks, playing for time. That didn’t sound like the sort of ‘deal’ he’d be interested in. "Instead of Iris?"

Wells smirks. "Ah, yes; hadn't I mentioned? My name is not Harrison Wells - that was merely an identity I assumed upon coming to this era. Instead -"

"You're a Thawne," Barry breathes, inadvertently interrupting. "That's it, isn't it? You're his descendant! If anything happens to him, that would affect you, wouldn't it?"

"Very good, Barry," Wells says, because apparently _Barry_ interrupting him with insights is all well and good while Len doing the same is just annoying. It's okay, Len knows who the favored child here is, and he doesn't envy Barry one bit. "My true name is Eobard Thawne - a descendant of a great and noble house, politicians and scientists and kings, the great movers and shakers of history. It occurred to me that continuing to run around with Mr. Snart here could lead little Eddie into trouble. And while he himself wasn't anything special, his death would be - paradoxical."

"Very Back to the Future of you," Len says. 

"Indeed. Very well, enough of this - Mr. Snart, I will give you Mr. Rory, in his new stabilized condition, as well as my word that I will refrain from harming both of you. In return, however, you release Mr. Allen from your promise - and leave him here with me."

Barry swallows. "Len," he says before Len can react.

Len looks at him.

"It makes sense," Barry says quietly. "I'm the only one who's a match for him - even with your cold gun, you won't be able to do much. This'll at least keep you guys safe. It's a good deal. You should take Mick and go."

"That's right," Wells adds gloatingly, smirking as Barry flinches. "Just take Mr. Rory. You love him more, after all -"

"S'got nothing to do with who I love more!" Len exclaims. "That doesn't _matter_!"

"It - doesn't?"

"No! I'm a goddamn cop! Trading one innocent life for another is _unethical_."

"Unethical," Wells says blankly.

"Yes! Ethics! Contributing to another person's crime makes you part of it, while doing nothing doesn't. Listen, even for a psychopath like you that don't got a little voice that tells you right from wrong, there are rules that lay it all out, and the rules are real clear on this one. Emotions don't even come into the goddamn equation. No one's getting traded for _nobody_."

And then he catches Mick's eyes and without saying a single word they both act at once, in one gloriously synchronized motion the way they used to do when they were proper partners, Len acting as a distraction by pulling out his cold gun, keeping Wells' (Eobard's?) attention while Mick swings his bound arms straight across, thereby hopefully giving Len a chance to finishing getting his gun out.

Wells might be a speedster, but he still needs to notice something coming his way.

He also reacts to being punched in the balls the same as any other man.

Unfortunately, he recovers much faster.

Much, _much_ faster.

He knocks Len down, only to be hit in the side by a charging Barry, and next thing Len knows the two of them are running through the Accelerator.

It's no contest.

Wells is faster - _much_ faster. He has more experience, more practice, more time to experiment - he knows tricks Barry hasn't even conceived of.

He's leading Barry on a pointless chase through the Accelerator - or maybe not so pointless, given what he said about using the Accelerator to open a time portal.

Not good.

"Barry!" Len shouts. "Get Mick and Detective Thawne outta here _now_!"

Yes, he's aware that he could have safely left Thawne in, er, the other Thawne's custody; Eobard-Wells has already admitted he doesn't plan on killing him.

Not on killing him, no. But _harming_ him...

There are plenty of ways to harm someone if all you need from them are their genes.

Besides, Len would never leave someone trapped in a small room, an oubliette, abandoned and losing all hope of rescue - especially as Wells would undoubtedly move him to somewhere equally secure but less easy to find if he were given the chance.

At least Wells wasn't expecting Barry to veer off so sharply, obeying Len's orders without hesitation, and he actually comes to a complete stop for a moment, staring after Barry as the yellow flash of light zips out the door.

Then he turns to Len.

"Cold, Mr. Snart," he says, and his tone is murderous. "Very cold. When given a choice of which one of three to sacrifice, you choose - yourself. The cripple."

Suddenly he's in front of Len, standing far too close, the cold gun batted out of Len's hands to their feet. Len can't bend to pick it up, not with his injuries, and he's pretty sure his conventional weapon will be less than useless.

"Pity," Wells says conversationally. "I would have liked to work with you, one day. But I suppose you'll have to serve my purposes by showing Barry that nothing he loves will ever be safe until he defeats me. Me - and only me."

Len doesn't even feel the blow that throws him across the room, but he does feel it when he hits the ground, hard, his crutches clattering down around him, his side and leg on fire, his head spinning from the impact as he stares blankly up at the Accelerator's glass ceiling.

He can see the stars in the darkening evening sky.

Only two, mind you, but that's light pollution in Central City for you. Plus he's pretty sure only one of them's a star and the other a plane.

Still - not the worst view to end a life on.

He regrets it, of course, but Mick will be safe and well, and Barry - well, Len already broke Barry's heart when he turned him and his friends in to the police. Barry will mourn him, of course, and probably the what-might-have-beens, thanks to Wells’ little revelation, but he'll be fine, in time.

Wells appears above Len and hauls him up. 

"Not yet, Mr. Snart," he says. God, what an utter cliché he is; Len could practically recite his next few words with him. "First I'm going to wait until Barry comes back. _Then_ I'm going to kill you."

Yep. Just as expected.

"Boss!"

Wait, what?

That was _not_ part of the script.

Especially since that was Danvers' voice, rather than Barry's or Mick's.

"Who are you?" Wells asks, a bit blankly. He's probably never even _seen_ Danvers before.

"That's my secretary," Len says, just as blankly. He has no idea what she's doing here - Iris must've told her where they were.

"Admin assistant, boss!" she shouts, a kneejerk instinct.

"...right," Wells says, obviously deciding that he doesn't care. "Unless you've instructed Mr. Allen not to return -"

Damn, Len _wishes_ he'd thought of that. 

But no, it's too late for that, he can already see the red-and-yellow streak that is Barry Allen, running towards them desperately, and he can see that Wells sees him, too, and Wells lifts his hand, vibrating as fast as a saw, and - 

Suddenly there’s glass everywhere.

Glass?

Oh, he's gone through STAR Labs’ glass ceiling. 

Wait - how?

Danvers has him in her arms.

(Heh. Women and glass ceilings - there's a pun in there, somewhere.)

Wait, is Danvers _flying_?

That seems impossible, but they're definitely hovering far above STAR Labs, looking down at Central City, all lit up for the encroaching night, laid out beneath them. Which - huh?!

They float there in silence for a long moment.

It’s getting awkward.

“Well, Danvers,” Len finally says, because he’s never been awkward with Danvers and he has no plans to start now. “No _wonder_ you never had train problems!"


	20. 20

Ever since Barry became a speedster, he's found that he's able to keep up with things. Events. People.

Real life plot twists?

Except five seconds ago he was dropping Mick and Eddie back at the hospital (just in case), two seconds ago he was running back into STAR Labs desperate to save Len (who loves him?!) but knowing he'd be too late -

And now he and Wells (Eobard Thawne) are standing in the base of the Accelerator, both of them empty-handed and covered in glass shards, staring blankly at each other.

"Did - did _you_ know that she could fly?" Barry asks hesitantly. He doesn't think so - he doesn't think Wells has ever even _met_ Kara - but Wells has been three steps ahead of him this whole time, so...

Wells just shakes his head, still looking blank.

Barry kinda agrees. Like - what? What just happened?

Kara also moved, like, _really_ fast. Like. Speedster fast. She's a speedster? Except she can also _fly_ \- and that was definitely flying, not jumping, Kara was totally, like, horizontal there - and, just -

Hold up. 

They're both just standing around being shocked. Neither of them is moving, which means whoever starts moving first will have a (brief) advantage over the other.

Barry was _definitely_ losing earlier, and he's pretty sure even with whatever advantage he can get from an early start, he's going to keep losing.

Time for a strategic retreat.

Barry makes a break for it. 

Wells only notices, tearing his bemused attention away from the shattered ceiling, when Barry's nearly at the door, and then he gives chase - because _of course_ he gives chase, he's obsessed, he's not going to give up, he's never going to give up - right up until Barry hits the street outside and a pair of arms catches him right under the armpits and up they go.

"This is awesome," Barry says to the greatness of Central City, laid out before him, as he's carted off into the air, legs dangling below him and Wells left behind stewing angrily at STAR Labs.

There's a sigh behind him. 

"You know," Kara says into his ear, "I really feel like I expected people to be a little more shocked by this revelation. Possibly more negative. I don’t know. Something."

"I don't think Len actually has any negative feelings about you," Barry says honestly, since that's probably what she was actually worried about. He thinks Kara's awesome, and he's pretty sure the feeling's mutual, but at this stage of their budding friendship they still both worry over Len _way_ more than they think of each other. "And I was shocked! I was _totally_ shocked. There were full minutes of shock. But, y'know, what with me being a speedster -"

"Yeah, yeah, you processed it already. And the boss doesn’t do shock in public, I know. But still!" she says petulantly, and then dives down to a rooftop where Len's already sitting, leaning against the edge, to drop Barry off and hover above them. "Barry, can you stay here and keep the boss company while I go get either his braces or his spare crutches? I feel like the ones he dropped in STAR Labs are probably a total loss."

"I told her to go back to STAR Labs and pick up what I'd left behind," Len says, very solemnly. "And yet for some reason she grabbed you -"

Barry sniggers.

Kara does, too, then punches Len lightly in the arm. "Stop goofing around. I'll be back in five minutes - most of which will be spent digging around that _mess_ you call an apartment."

And then she's gone.

Barry looks at Len, whose legs are splayed out in front of him in a way that suggests that his leg is hurting him and whose face is overly controlled in a way that suggests his side isn't doing him any favors either.

"So," Barry says.

"Yeah," Len says.

"Did you...?"

"Nope. Didn't have a clue."

"Fair," Barry says, because he hadn't either. Of course, he isn't as close to her as Len is, but also he hadn't noticed the Wells thing for ages, so he has no place to talk about noticing things. "You do hate mysteries."

"I also hate applying normal person logic to a situation and ending up with time-travel and superheroes," Len says dryly. "I guess I'll live. Anyway, like I told her, it doesn't really matter, since it doesn't seem to impact her efficiency as a secretary any."

Barry's almost expecting Kara to reappear and yell 'Admin assistant!' at them, but she doesn't. That's probably the point - Len's paranoid (and justly so) enough to want to make sure she's not spying on them.

And, well, Barry agrees. Just because Kara has superpowers doesn't mean that he intends to start treating her any differently. Although –

"Okay, so, one thing," he says. "I feel, like, 90% certain that most of your stories about how you met Kara hinged on her _not_ being in Central during the Accelerator explosion."

"She wasn't," Len says. "She's not a meta, she's an alien."

Barry pauses.

He opens his mouth to say something, realizes he has nothing constructive to say, and closes his mouth again.

He considers the issue for another moment.

And then -

"She's a _what_?!"

"An alien," Len says, with a wry expression that suggests that he took this little revelation with much more grace externally and approximately the same degree of taken-abacked-ness internally. "Born on a planet called ‘Krypton’, apparently; she and her cousin were schlepped off to Earth because it has a comparable ecosystem to their homeworld, which was in the process of exploding at the time."

"Exploding."

"Apparently."

"I see."

"Yeah."

"And, because she's an alien, she can - fly? And move at speedster speeds?"

"And punch hard enough to move a car," Len says, rubbing his arm. "I'm extrapolating, but it seems reasonable."

Barry considers this. 

"...that’s _so cool_ ," he finally says.

"Agreed," Len says, unable to keep from grinning. 

"So," Barry says, and he doesn't really want to say what he has to say next, but he doesn't feel like he really has a choice. "I guess that means you don't need me, huh?"

Len blinks owlishly at him. "I - don't follow."

"Well, you came to me because you need a speedster to fight Wells - Thawne - whatever, right? And now that you have Kara -"

"You idiot," Len says, but fondly. "I came to you because I wanted an excuse to see you again, not because you were our last hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Of course Len goes there. He wouldn’t be Len if he didn’t think in movie quotes and talk in puns. 

"Listen," Len says, his face going serious. "I'm not - I don't - listen, I was right, what you were doing was wrong, and that's definitely not going to magically go away anytime soon. There have to be consequences. But - I should have listened to you.”

Barry stares at him.

Len meets Barry’s eyes. “I should have taken time to understand your perspective and accounted for all the issues surrounding what happened - including the fact that Wells is a master manipulator who deliberately positioned himself to gain your trust as an unquestionable father-figure, and the fact that he used your _actual_ present father-figure to reinforce what he was doing.”

He shakes his head. 

“It's not that I don't know how corruption creeps in, tainting everything around it, or even that the CCPD's been drowning in it for so long that it infects the best of us,” he continues, making a face. “I should've thought about that, and I didn't. I didn’t, because I was hurt, and I was hurting, and it felt like you did it _at me_ , when that wasn't the case at all. And that was wrong, too.”

Len reaches out and puts a hand on Barry’s arm. “I should have given you the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “And while I'm not apologizing for the fact that I'm very likely going to have to put you in jail for what you've done, I'm at least sorry for that."

Barry swallows, hard. His heart feels like it's going a million miles an hour, and with his powers, that's actually possible. 

He's going to react to Len's explanation in a mature manner befitting the seriousness of the subject, to accept his apology, to thank him for his faith in Barry, to –

"Did you really tell Mick that you were in love with me?" he blurts out instead. "In - in the hospital, I mean, like Wells said."

...damnit. 

He's been thinking of little else - yes, he knows, inappropriate in a life-or-death situation but the possibility of Len loving him – the thought of Len dying without ever knowing that Barry loves him back -

Barry ran faster than he ever has before.

But Len _didn't_ die. He's alive, he's _here_ , and Barry has to know the truth.

Len pauses for a long moment.

"Please, Len," Barry says. "It's important."

Len's throat works. "Yes," he says. "I did. I - still do."

Barry -

Barry needs to sit down.

The space right next to Len is wide open, so he sits there. It’s a perfect fit.

He somehow thought it would be.

"I understand if it's - unwanted," Len is saying, because Kara is right; he _is_ an idiot. Barry's in love with a total idiot, and he couldn't be happier about it. "Setting the cops on your family, your friends, in quite such a manner -"

"Len," Barry interrupts. "I love you, too."

And then he kisses him. 

It takes a second for what Barry said to sink in, but then Len's kissing him back and his hands are in Barry's hair and Barry's hands are on Len's shoulders and –

Kara clears her throat.

Barry yelps and scrambles off of Len's lap. He isn't sure when he got _on_ Len's lap, actually, and now that he thinks about it, it probably wasn't doing any good for Len's leg and side –

Kara's standing right behind them, laughing and holding Len's crutches in one hand and his leg and back braces in the other. They're pretty unwieldy, but she holds them as if they weigh nothing - seems Len was probably right about the super-strength.

She grins at both of them. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"You support this," Len tells Kara crossly. "I know you do. Why're you interfering _now_?"

"No, no, don't get me wrong, I'm delighted," she says. "It's about time! You two are so good together!"

"Then go fly around the block for another few minutes!"

Kara giggles. "Oh, trust me. I would. But..."

Her smile fades, replaced with a serious look.

"But?" Len prompts.

"The riots have started."

"Crap," Len says, all levity gone. "Iris West doesn't leave dust in her tracks when she puts her mind to it. The news must've gone out."

" _Oh_ yeah," Kara says. "Whatever wasn't on the evening news - _all_ the evening news, local editions, newspapers, television, radio, the lot - has gone around the more informal channels. The cardboard brigade's actually affirmatively telling people, do you know that? They never do that."

"No one in Central likes the Families," Barry mutters. "God, people are going to go crazy."

"People _are_ going crazy," Kara corrects. "All the set-up we've done is helping keep it somewhat contained, but - yeah. The Families are going to have a hell of a time sewing up their deal with this mess in the streets. No way our people get it cleaned up by Election Day."

"Not our people, no," Len says. "But the Feds are coming in tomorrow - and by now, cover story or no, the Families will know about it. There's going to be war tomorrow - now that they know secrecy isn't an option, the Families are going to tug on every string they've ever had, call in every debt, and they're going to try to force this deal down all our throats whether we know about it or not."

"The riots will get national attention," Barry says. "That should help get us more back-up, right? National Guard or something. But whether they'll be in time, I don't know - especially since we've lost so many cops to corruption already, and are probably only going to lose more. There's a chance we'll be overwhelmed. Besides, we still haven't solved the problem of what to do about Wells, who's probably capable of taking down an army or two on his own. What do we do now?"

Len doesn't say anything.

Barry glances at him and sees that he's staring out across the city.

Their city - their beautiful, corrupt, misled Central City, which has the potential to be so much more than it is.

Not unlike all of them, really.

"Len?" he prompts.

"I think the boss has an idea," Kara says. "That's his 'I have an idea' face. I hate the 'I have an idea' face."

"Because it's usually a bad idea?"

"Oh, no, it usually works out. It's just going to be _absolutely nuts_."

"You're not wrong," Len says, still looking out at the city. "Davners, Barry – I know you’ve been using your powers, but where we’re going, I don’t want you to use them, no matter what the incentive. It's too risky, especially with rotten military scientists in the area.”

“Where we’re going?” Barry echoes. 

“Yeah,” Len says. “Kara, can we make our way to the governor's mansion from here on foot?"

"Through the riots?" Kara says doubtfully. "I mean, we _could_ , if we don't mind being shoved around a bit, and with Barry and me making sure no one trips your crutches up, yeah. But why the governor's mansion?"

"That's where the ‘absolutely nuts’ idea comes into play," Len says dryly. "Barry, call Singh, tell him where we're going and our likely route; we need him to meet us there. Now enough talking - let's go."

Going through a crowd of angry rioters without using his powers is basically every bit as bad as Barry would have imagined it to be, which is to say, not unlike Central City mall during the worst ravages of Christmas shopping, only with more chanting and more anger and a lot more people holding sticks to hit things with out of sheer irrepressible rage.

They’re all talking about the Families. 

Oh, yes, everyone’s always _known_ about the Families, but no one knew how deep it went. No one knew that everything they trusted to hold back the dark was actually aiding and abetting it. 

“The _governor’s mansion_?!” Singh exclaims into the phone when Barry calls him. “That’ll be a job and a half. Tell Snart he’d better have a damn good plan – the only reason most of my men are at work right now is because I haven’t let them leave. And when they go, a bunch of them aren’t coming back, and it won’t be because they’re cowards.”

Singh doesn’t need to actually say that it’ll be because they’re on the opposite side. 

“We’re bleeding morale like crazy,” Singh continues. “At a minimum, Snart’s riots are doing a good job making sure no one leaves Central – we have barricades on all the major highways, but they’ve been reinforced by all the abandoned cars left behind by pissed-off people – but it’s a complete mess.”

“Len has an idea,” Barry repeats, since he can’t give out any details of a plan he doesn’t know the details of. Possibly that’s intentional on Len’s part. “And we have a few, uh, surprises up our sleeve.”

“You remember that I already know about your so-called ‘running hobby’, right?” Singh asks skeptically.

“Yeah, I know, I meant in addition to that.”

“Christ. You know what, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Tell Snart I’ll be there.”

Barry hangs up and ducks as someone waves a stick – no, an umbrella – over his head.

“Seriously, dude?” he demands.

“Sorry,” the guy says, looking sheepish. “It was the first thing I could find. Hey, a bunch of us are going to go down to trash the restaurant down on Camillo Street, the one everyone knows is a Family front, you wanna come with?”

“He can’t,” Len interjects. “We’ve got other plans. But remember that the cooks are probably victims too – keep your aim to the blood-bonded Family assholes.”

“Good point,” the guy says agreeably, then raises his umbrella to charge onwards down a side street, accompanied by a small mob of people.

Barry hopes the guy really does keep it in mind. 

He shares worried glances with Kara and then they both realize that Len's managed to get ahead of them _again_ and rush (at regular speed) to catch up.

Len might not be a speedster, but he has a way of eeling his way through the smallest possible gaps in a crowd - even with his crutches! - that lets him keep moving at an accelerated forward pace that Barry and Kara have trouble keeping up with. 

Especially with the way people tend to cut right in front of them and then _slow down_. It's enough to drive a man to consider punching people. 

Seriously, Barry's been trying not to use his powers for less than fifteen minutes and he already misses it. He can tell from Kara's expression that she, too, would love nothing more than to just leap into the sky right now.

Damnit, Len just darted through another gap and now there's a whole parade between them. _How is he doing that?!_

This time, though, when Barry and Kara catch up, Len's actually stopped, even though they're less than two blocks away from their destination. Barry can even see Singh in the distance, directing his cops to help funnel the people onto the side streets so as to thin the crowds a bit. 

But no, Len's stopped to talk to some guy - an older man, shorter than Len, given to fat and with a nasty expression. He's not marked as a blood-bound Family guy, no tattoos that Barry can see, but Barry's willing to bet he's no good.

One of Len's underworld contacts, maybe?

Barry gets close just in time to hear the stranger saying, "- major opportunity here. With your help, I can -"

"Are you fucking kidding me," Len says flatly.

"Don't you use that tone on me, son," the man warns, scowling. "I know I taught you better -"

"My city is _literally on fire_ ," Len snarls. "The Families are going to destroy _everything_. And all you care about is lining your pockets - no," he adds when the guy steps forward, a threatening look in his eyes. "No, no, no, _no_. I don't have fucking time for this. No fucking time, no fucking bandwidth, just _no_." Then he raises his voice. "Officer!"

"What the hell are you doing?" the man hisses.

"What I oughta've done years ago," Len says. "You're under arrest."

"I'm _what_?"

"Under arrest," Len says. "For criminal conspiracy to commit a robbery and for attempting to solicit a policeman to join -"

"A _policeman_?!"

"Didn't I mention? Oh, good, Officer Gonzales -" This is one of Singh's guys who heard Len's shout and came running over. "- do me a favor and Miranda this asshole before sticking him down some sort of hole? I can't deal with him right now. Just get him outta my way."

Officer Gonzales blinks, then shrugs. He's a big guy, taller than Len and twice the width, built like a linebacker; Barry's always ascribed the man's easy-going nature to the fact that he’s probably never met anything that could effectively stop him. "Sure, boss."

"You can't do this!" the other guy shouts at Len.

"Just did," Len says, and off he goes again, straight into the crowd.

Kara and Barry exchange exasperated looks and run after him.

"Hey, who was that guy, anyway?" Barry asks, deciding a light jog is the only way he's going to keep up with the amazing forward momentum machine that is Leonard Snart on crutches. 

"My dad," Len says shortly.

"Your _dad_?!" Kara yelps.

"Yep."

"Hold up," Barry says, alarmed. "The one who -"

"Yep."

"Including that time with the bomb in Lisa’s head?" Kara demands.

"That's the guy."

Kara and Barry don't even need to glance at each other to coordinate; they just both spin around immediately to start stalking back towards the man now revealed to be Lewis Fucking Snart, as Barry privately calls him in his head. After some of the stories that Len's told, not to mention this apparent 'bomb in Lisa’s head' business that Barry is totally going to get Kara to explain later, there is _no way_ they are going to let this guy get away with –

"Get back here!" Len yells. "Morons! Both of you! We're almost there!"

Barry groans. Kara does, too. 

But they go back.

Protecting Len from _current_ danger takes precedence over getting revenge for past injuries, no matter how grievous.

...barely.

They manage to get into the governor's mansion on account of Len and Singh both flashing their badges and shouting; apparently the governor's security is convinced that no one would have the balls to fake _two_ police captain IDs.

(Also, their not-so-quiet comments of "Is that Captain Cold?!" suggest that Len's nickname is, as Wells predicted, about to become both permanent and widespread.)

Once they get upstairs, it turns out Mick and Iris and Eddie are already there. Even Cisco and Caitlin are there.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Len demands, his eyes fixed on Mick and Eddie. "You were just _kidnapped_ -"

"I sent them ahead," Singh tells him. "They were mostly just dehydrated. Even your, uh -"

"Partner," Mick says, with a testy tone that suggests this isn't the first time he's said it.

Barry doesn't really care, though, because Mick saying that has caused the biggest grin Barry's ever seen on Len's face, and he'd be willing to fight someone to keep it there.

"Well, boss?" Mick says. "Captain Oinks here said something about you having a plan."

Now it's Singh's turn to look testy.

"Glad you're making friends," Len tells Mick, still grinning. "Where's the governor?"

"Through the doors," Iris says. "Along with the Police Commissioner."

"The _Commissioner_?" Barry asks, alarmed. "Is he..?"

"Currently claiming ignorance," Eddie says dryly. "We're currently pretending to believe him."

"Innocent until proven guilty," Len says, like the world's _biggest hypocrite ever_ , and then he's off again, heading towards the doors. "Besides, we might need him."

That sounds more like Len.

The governor is pacing a hole in her rug, and the Commissioner looks like he's bitten into something unpleasant.

"Governor Kinsley," Len says. "Nice to make your acquaintance."

"You're Snart?" the governor demands. "The one who uncovered this mess?"

"That'd be me."

"Good for you," she says. "Now how do we get _out_ of it? I've lost a quarter of my security staff - and good riddance!"

"They tried to kidnap her," Commissioner Goddard says. He's got some dried blood on his suit, suggesting he might’ve helped stop that attempt personally. "Mayor Bellows's orders - he's gone all the way over."

"Over some _adultery_?!" Barry exclaims. "Seriously?"

"I think it’s more that he puts the odds on the Families winning," Governor Kinsley says. "And to be perfectly honest I don't blame him."

"I've already called in the Feds," Len says. "They'll be porting in every available hand they have available tomorrow, and they won't have as many corrupt in their ranks."

"I've called the National Guard in as well," the governor agrees. "But it won't help us in the short term - General Eiling scattered them all earlier this week. Training exercises." She sneers. "Because he's in on it too, of course."

"Glad you're taking this personally," Len says. "Because you really ain't gonna like my next suggestion."

"And this is where he goes off the rails, with the rest of us behind him," Kara mutters.

Mick nudges her in the side and offers his hand for a fist-bump, which she returns.

"I'm willing to listen to any suggestion at this point," Governor Kinsley says, scowling. "The Families have been building this for months; we've had under twenty-four hours to react. They're not going to stop with the kidnapping attempts, either, and I have _kids_."

"The rest of the country has no idea what's going on here," Goddard agrees. "Nor will they care how it gets pacified - whether it's because the Families win or lose."

"Agreed," Len says. "And that's why we need an amnesty."

"A _what_?!"

Barry can't blame her. Where did _that_ idea come from?!

"Amnesty," Len says. "Forgiveness for crimes caused by the Families in the lead up to this event - not _all_ crimes, obviously, just stuff they can show they were manipulated into in the set up for this. No, don't look at me like that, I hate the idea too, but it's _necessary_. The Families' biggest weapon is people's fear of the law - an amnesty'll cut off the ones who ain't really corrupt, just dumb and used to taking shortcuts and now getting pushed around by the Families because of it."

"The ones who feel they have no choice," Barry says, understanding. "The ones who are being blackmailed - the regular people, the police, everyone - they think their choice is between the Families and prison, if they stay on our side. If we change what's on our side -" 

"We eliminate the effect of the blackmail," Iris breathes. "And then they can come back - or refuse to go over."

"We'd probably stop bleeding police," Singh observes neutrally. "They were hardest hit, on purpose. I'm barely keeping my precinct together, and I don't know how the others are faring."

"Fine," Governor Kinsley snaps, her mouth twisted angrily. "You're right, I don't like it, but I see your point. But _you_ -" And here she jabs her finger at Commissioner Goddard, the man who had prior to all of this been helping the mayor in the primary against her tomorrow in exchange for getting the mayor’s help with his own run. "- are going to sign on whole-heartedly, you hear me? I'm going to be doing this on your express recommendation that this is the only way to stop the ongoing threat."

Goddard scowls, but they've got him on the spot: he hasn't suggested that he can keep his police in line any other way, and to do anything other than his utmost to help stop the ongoing disaster could be read as suggesting a certain corruptibility that it is now in very bad fashion.

Len is smirking.

Of course he is.

"Fine," Goddard finally barks. "I'll sign. But only crimes deliberately orchestrated by the Families, y'hear? We're not granting amnesty to every two-bit pickpocket that stole something in the last year."

"Of course," Len says soothingly, or as soothingly as he can while also gloating. "Just the stuff from the last few months, yeah? When they were building up to this. Only the stuff that happened _because_ of the Families, not in spite of."

"Fine," Goddard says through gritted teeth, glaring at Len. "Singh, I'm putting you in charge -" He says that like he thinks he's putting one over on Len, who pretends to look annoyed about it when Barry knows quite well that he didn't ever want to be in charge. Singh mostly looks long-suffering about it. "- and I want us coordinating with the FBI and anyone else who can help. Let's squash this little Family gambit like a bug."

He stomps off to where Governor Kinsley is already waiting with a swarm of lawyers, ready to retreat to her office to process (create) the necessary paperwork.

"All right," Singh says the second they're gone. "The second that amnesty's signed, we're going to publicize the living daylights out of it and get as many people reassurance as possible - not to mention heavily implying that the Families only got so far into the government and police through their blackmail schemes -"

"That's not really true, though," Iris objects. "Not at the top -"

"I don't care if it _is_ true, it's going to have to become true," Singh says. "The riots need to be stopped. It's already going to be cop-versus-cop warfare out there; we need the regular people to believe something made this an aberration, or else they're just going to destroy everything in an absolute frenzy of terror and rage. We'll never be able to rebuild their trust in the system if this isn't an exception to the rule. You hear me?"

"I hear you," she grumbles, then brightens. "Wait, does that mean my dad's being let out of the holding cells?"

"Yes," Singh says. "We need all the good men we can get."

Wait - Joe's being released? Because they need people, sure, but -

"Given the existence of the amnesty, I'm willing to drop the charges against him," Len says. "Don't get me wrong, he still needs a million hours of remedial ethics - probably everyone does - but what he and his lot did seems to fall under 'manipulated by the Families'."

Manipulated by Wells.

And if _Joe's_ free under the amnesty, then that means - Cisco, and Caitlin, and -

And Barry.

He's going to be able to keep his job. 

And not through some corrupt deal that's going to hang over his head the rest of his life, no, but through a (mostly) legitimate amnesty, signed by the governor herself.

(Boy, is Barry glad he never did anything to try to take any of the metas over state lines - that'd make it a federal crime, which is most certainly _not_ going to be covered by a state amnesty.)

Barry is seriously considering kissing Len right now, even though he knows Len would've never done it if it were just for him.

"There's one more thing," Eddie says. 

Everyone looks at him.

"Eobard's still out there," he says.

Everyone continues looking at him, a little blankly.

"Wells," Mick clarifies. "Evil speedster. Real name Eobard, remember?"

"Oh, right," Barry says. 

"Oh, yes, him," Kara says, pinking up a little. Probably because she forgot about him for a second there.

"The Reverse Flash," Cisco says. 

"But I - er, that is, I don't think the Flash can stop him," Barry says, painfully aware that they're not alone. "He's not fast enough."

"Then we'll just have to stop him some other way," Eddie says. "Listen, there's an option -"

"We are not Back to the Future-ing him and that's _final_ , Thawne," Singh says. "Do I need to put you on suicide watch? I will, just watch me. I've split off a portion of my forces just to protect Iron Heights and the courthouse cells; I won't hesitate to split some off for you."

"Yeah, that's a _terrible_ idea," Barry says, alarmed by the very thought. He likes Eddie! Iris likes Eddie! Besides, yes, Wells-Eobard said that he needed Eddie to stay alive, but - "Besides, he totally could've been lying. Like 90% of what he said doesn't make any sense in a time paradox sort of way _anyway_ , so who's to say that this would work? And even if it does, who knows how long it'd take to kick in?"

"Yeah, bad plan," Len agrees. "Scrap it. Now, I don't have my cold gun -"

"You don't?"

"It's still in STAR Labs where I dropped it while being thrown across the room," Len says dryly. "And that's assuming Wells - yeah, I'm going with Wells, Eobard's a dumb name anyway - assuming Wells didn't break it into bits the second after we escaped, that is."

"I still have my present," Mick volunteers, tapping a black-and-red gun strapped onto his thigh. "That'll help."

"We still don't know where to _find_ him," Iris points out. "He's probably not just sitting around in STAR Labs while the city's on fire - he's associated with the Families, isn't he?"

"Sort of," Eddie says. "As far as we can tell, he worked for them as an assassin in exchange for getting all sorts of illegal parts for STAR Labs when he was building it, to make construction happen faster; that's how he said it started when I asked him...don't look at me like that! I was trapped with him for hours and he likes to boast. That's how it started. He'd also been working with Eiling on something - Project Grodd or something, I don't know - around the same time, so he got the idea of putting them together."

"But _why_?" Iris asks. "Just to get STAR Labs built that little bit faster?"

"That," Mick says, "and 'cause he thinks of himself as a very important sorta guy. He likes being a mover and a shaker, likes being descended from movers and shakers, and he figured a nice little investment in Family power now would pay dividends for generations of Thawnes. No offense."

"None taken," Eddie says wryly. "If I ever have kids, I'm encouraging them to take up anything but politics. Maybe art. Or figure skating."

"My sister's a figure skater," Len remarks. "Bloodthirsty sport. Like hockey, just more spins."

"...maybe not figure skating, then."

"You could also just take my name," Iris says, hiding a smile. "No more 'Thawnes' then."

Eddie beams at her. 

"Getting back to the actual subject at hand," Singh cuts in. "I don't have the manpower to deal with the riots and fight this guy as well. Snart, can you and your task force at least try to handle him?"

"We've got it," Len assures him.

"We don't even know where he _is_!" Kara exclaims.

"That," Len says, "ain't gonna be a problem."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not saying I won't write the AU where Barry gets stuck in house arrest that you all seem to want, but maybe another time :)


	21. 21

"Again, Lenny?" old Mad Magpie cackles when Len limps up to her at her usual post near the CCPD. Most members of the cardboard brigade wouldn't care to be so close to so many cops, or wouldn't dare, but Magpie is an old homeless veteran who lived in Gotham before coming to haunt the streets of Central, and she doesn't fear much of anything. Len's been sending Danvers over with hot chocolate on a regular basis, though, so Magpie's usually willing to talk to him. "Don't you have any self-preservation?" 

"Don't mention it," Len says. "Really. Don't."

"You can fool that secretary of yours -"

"Admin assistant," Len interjects.

"- and you can fool that new boytoy of yours, but you can't fool old Magpie," she says. "You've ripped those stitches again."

"Like I said," Len says, suppressing the wince of pain at the mere mention. He's pretty sure he's bleeding - getting thrown around by a murderous speedster was definitely _not_ on his physical therapist's list of approved activities - but he's wearing enough layers and stayed in lurching forward movement enough that no one has had a chance to notice it yet. "Don't mention it."

She laughs. "I knew it," she says. "Can't fool an old bird of prey like me! I don't tell people things till they ask. But if anyone asks, I ain't promising nothing. Now, I see you're back to your wicked old ways, hanging around with that Allen boy - back together now, are we?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, good on you. He's cute. And I bet he goes pretty fast, if you know what I mean."

Len arches his eyebrows. He knows exactly what she means, and she's not advising him on how long it'll take to get Barry into bed. "You selling that info?"

"Hell no," Magpie cackles. "Like I said - he's cute!"

"Good. Lemme know if anyone _does_ start selling that, will you?"

"You'll get first word, Lenny. You've been a good enough customer to us all these years, paying more than your fair share and never turning us in for vagrancy; we can do you that much."

"Much obliged," Len says. "Hey, if I manage to surprise even you, do I get a bonus going forward?"

She arches her eyebrows at him. "I'm listening," she allows. 

"Mick's better."

"I already heard that he's awake," she sniffs.

"Not awake. _Better_. See?"

She squints around him in the direction he's gesturing at. Len can see the exact moment she spots Mick standing there, looking healthy as a horse (well, with some nasty burn scars, but those look years old already) and arguing cheerfully with Iris and Danvers about something or another.

"Well, I'll be," she marvels. "Yeah, Lenny, you get a bonus for that - assuming that being healthy means he's gonna be cooking up his usual free-for-all July 4th bash this year. News of that getting uncanceled'll buy quite a lot."

"It's definitely on," he assures her. "Assuming we haven't all been murdered by the Families, of course."

"True that," she sniggers. "Now, what're you going to do to _stop_ them?"

"As much as I can," Len says honestly. "But for that I need help - you remember when I was looking for intel on speedster stuff?"

"Yeah?"

"I need to find a speedster. The bad one, in yellow; he was at STAR Labs, but we don't know where he is now -" Danvers checked STAR Labs and reported no success. "- and we need to put him down if we're gonna put _any_ of this down."

"He's the one doing the disappearances?"

"He's the one doing the hits," Len agrees, since technically Barry caused some of the disappearances. Though he supposes that if you think about it a certain way, Wells was behind those, too, in an indirect sort of way... "Can you yank your chain and get me an answer?"

"Don't need to ring up the community, Lenny," she says, grinning. "You know they used to call me the Oracle, back in Gotham? Always knew what was going on, I did, and it's the same now: I already know where he is."

"And I'm guessing I won't like the answer?"

"Come now, you robbed him of his revenge or whatever; where else is he gonna go other than Central’s home away from home for the criminally inclined?" she asks, amused. "The place where everyone knows your name - and record."

Len experiences a distinct sinking feeling in his stomach. "Ah," he says. "Iron Heights."

Central City's one and only maximum security prison.

Len's been in a few times, to ensure his cover was appropriately legit. He doesn't remember it very fondly.

"He's getting jealous, he is," Magpie says complacently. "You've got an army, the Families've got an army, who doesn't got an army? He doesn't. But he can fix that."

No kidding. 

Especially since - and Len is remembering this with a wince - the metas from Barry's secret prison have just been transferred there pending trial, along with the specifications of the Accelerator needed to maintain the anti-meta-powers effect of their cells.

They'd even recruited Ramon to advise on the process of transferring the tech, with the recommendation that his cooperation in converting one of the wings (now dubbed the Metahuman Wing) would go some significant distance to reducing his eventual sentence. 

Len hadn't been involved with that personally, being busy with Mick's recovery at the time, but he'd set one of the DAs he'd always liked - an ardent prisoners' rights advocate in her previous life - on the task of making sure Ramon gave adequate thought to how what they already had in place in STAR Labs could be expanded such that the metas could enjoy their constitutional rights, however limited.

Len’s not entirely clear on the details, but whatever it was, it was only a temporary solution. Ramon is reportedly working furiously on developing some sort of meta-dampening cuffs that seem significantly more humane. 

All well and good in theory, yes, but it's now occurring to Len that what he saw as a grotesque human rights' violation, and the so-called Team Flash saw as a temporary convenience, Wells saw as more of -

Well, as a useful storage container.

As in, where you store things for _later use_.

(The image of tiny metahumans being placed into a pantry and pulled out at need by a giant Wells is deeply disturbing. Len sure is glad that no one's invented some sort of shrink ray...) 

"Thanks, Magpie," Len says, shaking his head to help him get rid of the unwanted mental images. "Appreciated as always."

"I'll let my people in Iron Heights know to expect you," Magpie offers. "There's always a few old cardboards in there for some reason or another. If you need something pulled, you just ask. You've got that bonus to spend now."

"Hopefully not necessary," Len assures her. "But thanks."

The resources of Len's task force, as they stand, are quite few in number, but fairly decent nonetheless: Len himself (mostly useful for tactics given the current state of his body), Mick (and his heat gun), Barry (and his powers), Danvers (and her powers), Detective Thawne (who Wells won’t kill), Iris, Snow and Ramon. 

Of the latter four, Thawne and Iris are trained in conventional weapons, and Ramon has invented some sort of vibration-based gun he claims can stun people in a humane matter (he emphasized that three times over - whatever that DA told him has clearly stuck). Snow doesn't have any offensive capabilities, but she's a doctor with some emergency care training, and Len's not about to turn that down.

Especially given the fact that if his side doesn't stop bleeding soon, he's going to need some of that training to be employed on _him_.

"You good?" Barry asks when Len rejoins them.

"Peachy," Len tells him, and ignores the way Mick suddenly focuses in on him. Stupid tell, using a word he only uses when things are not, in fact, good; he should've remembered not to use it around Mick. "We have a location for Wells: he was last seen in the vicinity of Iron Heights."

"Wait," Ramon says. "Where we just put all our metas?"

"He was keeping them on _purpose_ ," Snow exclaims, realizing. She's not slow, that one; just a bit naïve. "They were always going to be Plan B - except now they're in Iron Heights, not STAR Labs, so he needs to go get them."

"And the rest of Iron Heights if he can," Len confirms, shifting a little bit to a more comfortable position on his crutches. "Barry, Danvers - can you take us all to the little hill right outside the Heights? One-by-one should be fine."

"Boss and I go first," Mick suddenly says. "Then the rest. Let's go."

Before Len can say anything, they're in sudden transit.

It takes about twenty seconds to reach their destination, which Len suspects is a polite attempt to go nice and slow by the speedsters but which only makes his side and leg throb. 

Then he and Mick are alone, standing in the overarching shadow cast by the hulking hexagonal pit of despair that is Iron Heights. 

Everything seems quiet from here, but that could be an illusion.

"Mick -" Len starts.

"You're injured but don't want to sit out the fight," Mick says. "I know."

Mick always does. Best partner ever.

"S'not why I wanted to talk to you, since I know I won't be able to change your stubborn-ass mind on it," Mick continues. "I wanted to check in on what I said earlier."

"What part?"

"About us still being partners. I mean, now that you're a cop and all that."

"Mick, as long as you still want to be partners, we're partners," Len says firmly. "I wasn't kidding about not picking the job over you again. If you don't wanna be partners with a pig, I get it. It's fine. I'll just quit my job."

Mick snorts. "Twenty years undercover and you'll just quit? _Now_?"

"Hey, it means I've got a decent resume, don't it?"

"Ex-thief, ex-cop, please hire me -"

"I'm sure that set of skills appeals to _someone_ -"

Mick's laughing.

Len likes it when Mick laughs. He's missed it.

"Nah," Mick says. "Don't quit, not unless you want to. Hunting down bad cops is perfect for you. And I'll figure out some way that I can still be your partner."

Len grins at him. "Sounds like a plan, partner."

"Just do me a favor and don't die, boss."

"Says the guy who _just_ woke up from a coma?"

"Hey, I got magic-future-tech-healed by the bad guy, I'm fine. You, on the other hand, are doing your healing the good old fashioned way, except you keep _tearing your stitches_."

"Shut up before anyone else gets here and hears you."

"I heard him," Danvers says, floating a few inches above them and still holding a dangling Ramon in one hand. "And I'm very disappointed in you."

"Crap," Len says. "Listen, Snow can give me a patch job, but there's no way I'm letting you guys go into Iron Heights without me, got it?"

Snow gets dropped off next. By Barry. Without another word.

"You're in trouble now," Mick crows. "Skirt's got moxie."

"Traitor," Len says, but it turns out Snow can in fact patch him up pretty quickly - a staple gun, some bandages, and a dermaplastic seal, plus instructions to keep from twisting too much if possible so that his back brace can try to keep his spine from popping out of place or something - so it turns out all right in the end. 

While they're doing that, though, the rest of the team stares at Iron Heights.

"God, I hate this place," Mick says.

"It's - quieter than I thought it'd be," Danvers says.

"Have you never been?" Barry asks. "I - well, you know, with my dad - I've been plenty of times."

"Hate to break it to you, but you're the odd one there, Barry," Ramon says. "I'd never been here before I came to help install the meta dampening tech."

"Really? You invented…?"

"No, no," Ramon says, looking embarrassed. "I haven’t had time to come up with something new. What we did was basically just port over a mini-Accelerator, looping around the walls of the place – luckily the hexagonal hallways around the outside that the guards use for patrols is close enough to being round to work. It works on the same set of principles as the Particle Accelerator in STAR Labs does."

"Any chance that it'll block Wells' powers, too?" Iris asks.

"No, not unless he goes into one of the cells and closes the door. The entire system's not even noticeable until everyone's locked away - not enough energy. We're just running electrical energy through it, not accelerated particles, so it doesn't quite have the same effect."

"Probably for the best," Thawne says. "One Particle Accelerator explosion is more than enough."

"Yeah, that's true..."

“Does Wells know about what you’ve done?” Danvers asks curiously. “With the mini-Accelerator, I mean?”

Ramon frowns, considering it. “No, I don’t think so,” he says slowly. “This was after the whole chest-in-hand – er, that is, hand-in-chest –”

“Her eyes are up here, buddy,” Iris jokes.

Ramon flushes. “It was just a slip of the tongue!”

“I bet you want to slip someone some tongue –”

“Iris, leave him alone,” Barry says, hiding a smile. “Be nice. You’re making poor Kara blush.”

“He’s not my type,” Danvers says primly. “Sorry, Cisco.”

“I’m not actually interested,” he says crossly. “I like my women a bit more – dangerous.”

“You know Kara can lift cars, right? And fly? And probably crush your head like a nut? How is she not dangerous?”

“An _aura_ of danger, you know what I mean…wait, how’d we get on this subject?”

“I don’t know, but I want off,” Thawne says dryly. “You were saying about whether Wells knows about the mini-Accelerator?”

“Yeah, right. No, I don’t think so. When the police showed up to STAR Labs, he wasn’t there, and they had me shut off the surveillance system before we started moving tech around. I certainly didn’t tell him, and I don’t think Caitlin did –”

“Wasn’t even aware of it,” Snow says, still focusing on Len.

“Right. So, yeah, no. I don’t think so." 

"Okay, you're as good as I can get you," Snow tells Len. "Now up you go; we need you to tell us what the plan is."

"There is no 'plan'," Len says, getting back up. The painkillers Snow had brought with her are _amazing_. "We've gone well into the stage of the plan where everything goes off the rails."

"Len," Barry says, mildly censorious.

"What?" Len asks. "It's true. You want a plan? Okay. Plan is: we go inside, find Wells, subdue Wells. If necessary, fight other people in the process."

"I think I was happier without knowing that that was the plan," Ramon mutters. 

"Second door forward?" Mick asks, focusing on practicalities. "That's the least guarded - though I gotta admit I never thought I'd be using that to break _in_."

"Yeah," Len says wryly. "We live in interesting times."

Getting into Iron Height isn't hard - they know where the door is, they know how it's opened, and Len can pop it in under thirty seconds (how's _that_ for "out of practice", Danvers?) - but the lack of any security on the inside is a very bad sign.

"Dead?" Thawne asks, his face set. He's taking this ancestor stuff very seriously.

"Maybe, maybe not," Ramon says. "He's got superspeed and this is a prison, right? He might've just put the guards in the cells."

"Probably the only way they're going to survive a massive prison riot," Mick says. "Speaking of, I hear noise - main hall's this way."

"Is that the riot?" Iris asks. "Not to borrow Kara's words from earlier, but that's a lot quieter than I expected."

"It is," Len says, equally puzzled. "Let's go find out why."

Sure enough, the main hall was full to bursting with prisoners - far more than get let out in any one shift - but they're not really rioting. More like milling around confusedly.

Len and Mick share a perturbed look.

Still, there's only one way to find out what's up, so Len hobbles over to the first prisoner he even vaguely recognizes and smacks him on the leg with his crutch to get his attention. "What's going on?" he demands.

"Snart?" the guy - a con called Joey Monteleone, but mostly nicknamed Tarpit for reasons Len has never wanted to learn - asks, blinking at him. "Ain't you a cop now?"

"One with no sense of self-preservation," Mick growls. He might be right; Len'd totally forgotten that he can't just ask people (well, criminals) things anymore. "That a problem?"

Tarpit considers for a second. "It true you got a job fucking up corrupt cops for a living? Instead of snagging cons?"

"Yeah, it's true," Len says cautiously. That doesn't sound like the prelude to a call for lynching. "Not really interested in a job snagging cons, not unless they're doing something real bad where I can see 'em. Same rules as before, really."

"Cool," Tarpit says, then suddenly turns around and shouts, "Hey, everyone! Snart's here! He'll know what's up!"

And suddenly everyone is turning to look at him, the room breaking out into whispers.

Len sees Barry and Danvers both tense up, ready to run him away, but he waves at them to hold off. No one seems violent - yet.

In fact, most of the whispers that Len can hear don't concern the fact that he is (and was) a cop; they're more focused on his career as a very good freelance thief. 

A very good thief that was pretty well known for _not_ being affiliated with the Families.

"Listen, Snart, it true what they're saying about the Families taking over?" one of the cons asks.

"I mean," Len says, nearly falling over with surprise when Tarpit pushes him up onto one of the tables so as to better see and be seen, "I don't plan on _letting_ 'em, but they’re certainly trying their best."

"And there's riots in the streets?" another one asks. "Anti-Family riots?"

"Well, yeah -"

"And they're calling in their cards? All of 'em?"

"Whatever they can, sure. But there's an amnesty -"

"An _amnesty_?"

"Only for anyone manipulated by the Families in the lead-up to this," Len warns. "Or, I guess, involved in the riots afterwards."

He's a little bewildered by the fact that everyone keeps looking to him for answers in this impromptu little Q+A. 

Luckily, in his time of need, Mick is there for him.

"Hey, assholes!" he bellows. "You know what that means? That means no extra sentences for anyone fighting _against_ the Families, and the Families too busy to call in any cards they have on you. So tell me - who wants to go _fuck up some Families_?"

The roar of enthusiasm is very near enough to flatten Len backwards. 

Ah, Central City.

Where even the criminal underworld hates organized crime.

Len's never felt more at home.

It helps that the whispers (not really whispers, now) are about Len's recognized skill at prison escapes that don't end badly. 

There are also, here and there, some comments about not wanting to work for that, quote, "yellow Family fucker". 

Right. 

"Can someone point me to where the asshole in yellow is?" Len calls. "And in the meantime, let's get you guys outta here - we've popped one door, but let's try to avoid a riot - nice and orderly exit, that's the trick of it - and while we're at it, does anyone know where the guards have gone..?"

The guards, it turns out, are in fact locked into the same cells the prisoners have been liberated from, in what Len assumes was meant as a cruel bit of irony but which probably ensured that they weren't murdered by vengeful criminals. 

The rest of the exodus is pretty swiftly organized - Len makes them pair up in the buddy system, using their cellies as buddies, in order to make it a bit less chaotic, and it works like a charm - and before anyone really understands what's happening, he's being helped off the table and whisked off back to his task force to focus on their Wells problem as the criminals file out of the prison.

"We've been discussing the issue," Iris tells Len when he rejoins them. "The prisoners don't know where Wells is, but we're pretty sure we do."

"Oh? Where? The meta wing?"

"No," Ramon says. "We figure he won't want to risk being stuck in any of those cells, just in case; he probably got the metas out of there and took them with him."

"Took them with him - where?"

"Wing C," Barry says, voice unusually grim. "The low-security wing."

Len frowns.

"That's where Barry's dad is," Iris says, equally grim.

Ah.

Old Doc Allen. The good man, who was framed and sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit - by Wells.

Who is obsessed with Barry.

Not good.

"Right," Len says. "So this is probably a trap, but we're going to have no choice but to spring it. All agreed?"

"With any luck, Wells won't be expecting all of us, and not this fast," Thawne says. "He's a planner, but we've thrown his plans off the rails; he's playing it all by ear now."

"Just means he's desperate," Mick says. "Desperate men are dangerous."

"Still, I don't see that we have a choice," Len says. "Let's go - er, in the interests of speed, Danvers, could you..?"

He ends up getting a piggyback ride from her while Mick carries his crutches.

It's humiliating.

"I could probably carry you bridal style," Barry offers oh-so-innocently. "If you wanted."

"Just because Mick has my weapons -"

"Crutches aren't weapons," Ramon objects.

"You'd be surprised," Danvers and Iris chorus.

"- doesn't mean I'm taking any lip from you," Len finishes, ignoring them. "So shut it."

Barry proceeds to mime zipping his mouth shut, though that doesn't get rid of the grin.

Getting close to their destination does that.

"His cell is this way," Barry says, looking down a deserted corridor. "Supposedly. But -"

"He's definitely not there," Danvers says. "Sorry, Barry. The only people here are in the main hall."

"How do you know that?" Ramon asks.

"Uh," Danvers says. "Would you believe me if I said X-ray vision?"

"What," Len, who knows what Danvers sounds like when she's being evasive, says. " _Really_?"

"As it happens..."

"We talking medical level x-rays," Mick asks interestedly, "or can you peep under peoples' clothing -?"

"No!"

"Quick denial," Mick says wisely. "You know what that means, right, boss?"

"Boss! Make him stop!"

"It means 'leave off teasing until we’re not in the middle of a firefight', Mick," Len says mildly. "We're checking the main hall next. Everyone got weapons out?"

"Except you," Snow says. "You're not fighting - no, not even on the crutches!"

"I'll keep that in mind in the event I have a choice," Len says dryly, getting off of Danvers' back and leaning back on his crutches. "But I'll try to stick to the back. We ready?"

"Ready," they chorus.

And then they walk into a trap.

Wells is lounging on an impromptu throne constructed shoddily out of prison tables, smirking at them, and all around him are the metas Len vaguely recognizes as being part of Barry's kidnapping.

They probably all bear a grudge.

A very reasonable grudge, but perhaps a less-than-timely one.

All but one of the current inhabitants of the main hall are metas. Only one exception: a cage, constructed out of twisted cell bars, placed immediately to Wells' left, and in that cage sits a terrified but defiant-looking Doc Allen.

Definitely a trap.

"Welcome, my friends, to my little hell on earth," Wells says. His smirk fades. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

The metas charge forward.

As the guy bringing up the rear, Len can see the battlefield unfolding almost immediately.

Barry disappears, replaced by a streak of yellow lightning, and a second later Wells, too, disappears, and the yellow and red lightning bolts zip around the room in perfect tandem.

Mardon - Len recognizes him - summons balls of ice into his hands, grinning meanly and throwing them at Thawne. Not a surprise, really; Thawne's Joe West's partner, and Mardon would know that. Unlike Iris, Thawne's a policeman; Mardon would consider him fair game. Thawne ducks away, shouting something about them not meaning any harm and coming in peace, but Len doesn't lay high odds on that approach actually working.

One of the metas turns into poison gas - Len remembers hearing about him - and flows forward, gaseous tentacles reaching out to strangle them all, but Danvers takes a deep breath and literally blows him back away from the others, flying forward to confront him one-on-one. It's still a little discordant, seeing his secretary (admin assistant) floating a few inches off the ground, still wearing her red skirt and mesh leggings and that ridiculous puppy-getting-ice-cream sweater she likes so much, her hands balled into fists and a fierce expression on her face, but Len can't help but grin in pride.

A second later, Mick steps up to join her, shouting, "I got this guy, go help the others!" and aiming a burst of his heat gun at Nimbus. 

"But -"

"My gun only kills, Skirt, and the boss wouldn't want me to murder prisoners. But this guy's got a death sentence, so he's fair game for me."

Danvers nods her understanding and backs off, turning back to the fight just in time to snag Ramon out of the way of the guy shooting lasers out of his eyes.

Len wonders what name Ramon gave him.

"Deathbolt coming in hot!" Ramon shouts, solving that mystery. "Caitlin, watch out -!"

Snow, who was 'Deathbolt's next target, disappears.

Literally disappears - Baez, the only female-presenting meta (Len hadn't noticed the gender disparity before, he wonders why that is), appears next to Snow in a burst of smoke, grabs her around the waist, and they both disappear and reappear elsewhere, out of the line of fire.

"You saved me!" Snow exclaims.

"You gave me all your old medical textbooks and talked to me while I was stuck in the Accelerator," Baez says. "I'm still pissed at you, but you don't deserve to be - wait, _Deathbolt_? Why does he get 'Deathbolt' and I get 'Peek-a-Boo'?! What the hell, Ramon?!"

"He has laser eyes!" Ramon shouts back from where Danvers has dropped him off and where he's aiming his vibration gun at Deathbolt. He shoots off a burst, which Deathbolt ducks. "What was I supposed to call him?!"

"I don't care what you call _him_ ," Baez says indignantly. "I care what you call _me_! Peek-a-boo is a kid's game! Or a stripper name! I want a badass name!"

"Is now _really_ the time -" Snow starts.

They seem to have Baez well in hand, and Ramon is now exchanging vibration blasts with Mr. Laser Bolts in a game of stalemate.

Iris -

Iris is fine. She has her hands on her hips and she's scolding a guy three heads taller than her, with steel skin, and much to Len's surprise it's working surprisingly well.

It helps that she clearly tasered him first - he still looks groggy.

Danvers, meanwhile, has flown over to confront the last meta, a relatively non-descript man in black with sunglasses; Len's not sure what his powers are, but he has no doubt Danvers can handle him.

That's all the metas handled.

Barry -

Barry's still not winning. He's keeping pace, barely, and he's keeping Wells' attention on him, but that's it. 

Wells is still faster. Wells is still stronger.

Wells is still going to win, and then he's going to murder everyone else in the room at a speed that ensures no one but Barry and maybe Danvers even knows it's happening. 

They won't be able to stop him.

This isn't a television show, where Barry could use the power of romantic love (Len), familial love (Iris, Doc Allen), or even platonic love (everyone else) to inspire him to greater speeds to squeak out a win. 

Even Danvers' help can only do so much - she's admitted that she's out of practice, and now that Wells is anticipating her, he'll have thought of something.

They have to find another way to stop him.

They need something creative.

They need something out of the box.

They need -

What the hell is _Charlie_ doing here?

He's peeking in through the door, barely visible, but to someone who knows him as well as Len does, he’s unmistakable.

Len hobbles himself over as quick as possible. "What the fuck, Charlie?" he hisses. "Get outta here! Get - why are you even _in_ here?"

"Attempted assault," Charlie says, unperturbed. "Someone I invited home overreacted." 

"You tried to eat them, didn't you."

"They didn't say no until we got there," Charlie replies, as if that makes any sense at all. "Anyway, I've got a message for you, from the cardboard brigade. Magpie said it's your bonus."

Len's eyebrows go up. "I'm listening."

"Magpie says to tell you that while most of what the Accelerator did was give people powers, but that there's a few people - joined the brigade recently - that seem to react badly. Like something's been taken away."

"Well, yeah," Len says. "That makes sense, I guess; you win some, you lose some -"

"She also said to tell you that Hartley Rathaway did or reviewed almost all of the construction on STAR Labs' version," Charlie continues. "Along with Francisco Ramon. All the hardware and tech, they knew it all in and out, just the two of them."

Len's about to ask why he cares when it suddenly hits him.

You win some, you lose some.

There's a mini-Accelerator built into Iron Heights. They already know that it dampens meta powers. If they get both Rathaway and Ramon on it, could they jury-rig it to try to _undo_ the grant of powers it gave before?

Len has no idea if that's even remotely possible, but what the hell, it's worth a shot.

"Thanks, Charlie," he says. "Now go away, get somewhere safe."

Charlie disappears down the hallway.

Len turns back, but before he can do or say anything, a giant dining table comes crashing into the wall only a few feet away from him.

Danvers is standing there, her eyes bright red, her expression furious and deadly and aimed at -

Well, mostly aimed at the guy currently cowering at Len's feet.

Non-descript meta man of the unknown powers, now no longer wearing sunglasses indoors like an idiot.

"What did you do?" Len asks the guy.

"My powers," the guy squeaks. "I cause people to become enraged, which distracts them."

"You...you realize there's nothing else here for her to get distracted _by_ , right? And that the major target of her rage would be you?"

"I realize that _now_!"

"Well, stop it! I need her for something."

"I can't stop it! She'll kill me!"

"At this rate, she's gonna kill you anyway," Len says dryly. "Here, listen, how about this: you undo it and I'll arrest you. Nice, safe police custody pending trial -"

"Deal! Deal!" the guy yelps as Danvers tears another table - longer than she is tall - off the ground, where it had previously been screwed down hard enough to resist the strongest felons' joint attempts to lift it up. 

A few seconds later, Danvers is bright red with embarrassment, but not with metahuman-inspired rage. An improvement.

"Can you take him and that Deathbolt guy back to STAR Labs for the time being?" Len asks her. "And then bring me Hartley Rathaway. The cardboard brigade will know where he is."

"Sure," Danvers says, then flies up behind Deathbolt to pop him one on the head - rough, but effective - and disappears a second later.

"I had him on the ropes," Ramon, who most definitely did not, protests. 

"Whatever," Len says, gesturing for him to come closer. "Listen, question: can we use the Accelerator here to create another dark matter pulse? Preferably reversed or something, to try to drain people's powers?"

"It doesn't work that way," Ramon objects. "This isn't Back to the Future, you can't just reverse the polarities and -"

He pauses.

"What?" Len asks.

"I mean, you can't do that," Ramon says slowly. "But you _can_ cause another pulse, if you had enough energy. As much as I hate admitting it, Wells built the original Accelerator with the intention of it blowing up with dark matter the second it had enough power, and we didn't have any choice but to use that same design here."

"Wouldn't that just give them more powers?"

"It might," Ramon says. "But the original explosion put Barry into a coma for months, remember? That dark matter's a real shock to the system. Even if it would be giving him more powers rather than cancelling them out - which it might, who knows, dark matter's weird - it still might disable Wells for the time being. That's what you're thinking, right?"

"It is, yeah."

"Good idea, in theory, but two problems. A, I don't know everything about the system -"

"Danvers is going to get Hartley Rathaway," Len tells him, and has the amused pleasure of seeing Ramon pull a face.

"Yeah, that'll work," Ramon says through gritted teeth. "That guy was a total jerk, but he _did_ know his stuff. Stupid, pretentious -"

"You can sue someone for torture and kidnapping, you know."

"- extremely intelligent person whom I'm going to be very nice to and work well with?" Ramon tries.

"That's better," Len says, suppressing a laugh. Now's not the time. "You said two problems - what's the second one?"

"We don't have enough energy to cause a pulse," Ramon says. "It's like I said earlier, we're only running electricity through the system, not -"

"Extremely fast-moving particles?" Len asks archly. "Like, say, those?"

He jabs a finger at the streaks of lightning still bouncing around the room.

One of which is his boyfriend.

"Oh," Ramon says. "Uh, yeah. That'd work. I - wait, wasn't that Wells' plan all along, though? For Barry to run through the Accelerator and power it for him to time travel with?"

"I have no idea," Len says, because the technical aspects of Wells' time travel plan mystify him. "But even if so, he was planning on STAR Labs, not the mini version you installed at Iron Heights - which, according to you, he doesn't even know about."

"Okay, that makes sense," Ramon says. "But - if they're both running through the system to power it, then there won't be any way to stop _both_ of them from getting hit by whatever new pulse we create. Whatever happens to Wells will happen to Barry: they might both lose their powers, or get hurt."

"Yeah," Len says, all humor fading. "I know."

He swallows.

He doesn't want to say it, but he knows it's true.

"That's a risk Barry's just going to have to take," he says. "You know he'd agree, if we asked him. If it meant saving the city -"

"And stopping Wells," Ramon says. "Yeah. You're right."

He squares his shoulders.

"I'll do it."


	22. 22

Barry's not fast enough.

He's not sure he even _can_ be fast enough, ever - the thought that Wells might've deliberately sabotaged his development as a speedster, ensuring that he's always going to be second best, has gone through his mind more than once - but he knows he's not fast enough now.

And now is when it matters.

He comes to a brief stop, panting for breath, for the fourth time in the last two minutes. He's being worn down, just trying to keep up with Wells' superior speed, and he knows it.

He wonders if Wells is trying to run him into exhaustion, and only when Barry can no longer move his legs, when his will to move is utterly broken, will Wells destroy everything Barry has ever loved.

His dad.

Iris.

Len.

Wells will kill them all.

He'll kill them all because he knows that promise or no promise, Barry would agree to anything Wells wanted if Wells showed him how to get them all back.

Or maybe - maybe Wells doesn't know that.

Maybe he'll just kill them because he can.

"Slowing down again, Mr. Allen?" Wells tsks, coming to a stop a dozen feet ahead of him. "For shame - and you were so promising when you were under my guidance."

"Still happier not to be," Barry spits at him. He can feel his muscles recovering, happy for the break. "You _murderer_."

"You take it all so personally," Wells says. "The deaths of these unimportant people. You’re always taking it to heart, even though they lead uninteresting, unimportant lives that ultimately mean nothing. You always have. That's a weakness, you know - a weakness that will always be your undoing -"

The wall behind Wells' head explodes.

Even when you can move at speedster speed, you still need a second to process shock.

Barry, who's further away, gets thrown back a few feet, skittering onto his feet and looking around in confusion - Wells is buried in the rubble, too surprised to dodge it properly, but that's temporary, Barry knows - 

"Barry! Come here!"

Iris!

He's at her side in a moment.

"You need to run around Iron Heights," she tells him, breathless. "All around the outside corridors; Snart has a plan. It might hurt you, you can't know what it is, but it has to be done and he's sorry and he loves you."

"Why didn't he tell me himself?" Barry asks, surprised.

Iris smiles. "Because I'm your best friend, Bar; I'm your anchor and he knows that. He knows I'll always be there for you, even when you go and fall in love with the second hottest guy in Central City -"

"Eddie being first?"

"Pssh, Eddie, I'm talking about Rory. Have you _seen_ those muscles?"

"Iris!"

She laughs - Iris, beautiful and wonderful as always, and at last, at last, he can love her whole-heartedly without any jealousy or resentment or longing; Iris, who is his anchor, his lightning rod, and of course Len would know whose voice Barry would be automatically drawn to, of course he knows - and Barry can hear the crackle of lightning that is Wells back on his feet and before Iris even finishes laughing, Barry's off again, twisting to tackle Wells right around the midsection before he goes anywhere near Iris.

And then they're running again.

Only this time, Barry's leading - not because he's faster, no, but because Wells saw him heading away and followed, drawn after him like a moth to the flame.

"Where are you going, Barry Allen?" he calls, mocking, darting in front of Barry's path to try to trip him up. Barry dodges and keeps going. "I never took you for a coward!"

Barry grits his teeth and focuses on running. He's not as fast. He needs every ounce of willpower just to stay ahead.

Not that Wells is trying to stop him, not really.

Clearly mockery is much more fun.

"Run, Barry, run," Wells calls, his voice jovial, "Yes, run away from me! Just like you always have - from the very beginning!"

The man who murdered Barry's mom.

The man who put Barry's dad into a cage – into the prison where he spent half of Barry’s childhood and into the cage where he is right now both.

The man who is going to kill everyone if Barry doesn’t find a way to stop him.

_Run, Barry, run._

"I'm not stupid, you know," Wells says conversationally, only a foot or two behind Barry now. "I know what you're up to."

Crap. How?!

"You can't hide anything from me," Wells says. "I've been studying you my whole life - even in the far future, before I ever met you."

"Creep," Barry can't resist saying.

"And once I met you, well, that just made it easier," Wells says, the flash of red lightning from his eyes the only sign he heard what Barry said. "For someone who lies as much and as effectively as you do, Barry Allen, you really are an open book to anyone who knows you."

Wells - Eobard Thawne - is probably right. 

He knows Barry.

But Barry never knew him - not until it was too late.

Just the way Wells wanted it.

And yet -

And _yet_ -

Wells is still running.

So the plan, whatever it is, is still on.

Barry focuses on running.

"I know you," Wells says again. "You'd never run from me, not really. You've been running to me your entire life, Barry. The Man in Yellow, the genius of STAR Labs, your mentor...I'm _everything_ to you."

Seriously, does Wells not get how creepy he sounds?

"And you, Barry Allen, are everything to me -"

Yeah, no, he's _definitely_ doing the creepy thing on purpose in an attempt to get under Barry's skin.

It's working pretty well.

"- because you're my only way home. And you're going to get me there."

"I'm really, really not," Barry says. He's panting again, damnit. He really hopes whatever plan Len's working on won't take much longer. "Why would you think I'd help you? After everything you've done?"

"Because that way we'd both win! Yes, I killed your mother, but I also give you a chance to get her _back_!"

Those things are really not equal and Barry has no idea why Wells thinks they are. A lifetime without his mom, versus a chance to destroy every important relationship he's built during that lifetime and possibly himself to save her?

Okay, Barry's not going to lie, he's super tempted. 

But they're _not_ the same. 

Only a psychopath who doesn't actually understand that the worth of a person is in the time you get to spend with them would think that they were.

And anyway, Barry promised Len he wouldn't.

He's really glad he did, too, because otherwise he might've fallen for Wells' bullshit the way he always has, and then Wells would get everything he'd ever wanted.

Everything he's done, all of that horror and death, would actually have been worth it, in Wells' eyes.

And there'd be no reason that he wouldn't just keep going.

Keep killing.

For all of time. 

"Know this, Barry Allen," Wells says. "You _will_ help me achieve what I want. Whatever stupid little plan you and your friends have concocted -"

He doesn't know what it is!

...probably because Barry doesn't know what it is.

Good plan, Len.

Barry knows that there’s probably something bad at the end of it, but he also knows that Len is cold enough to make the call he needs to. He knows that Len knows him well enough to know that Barry would agree to anything, anything at all, if it meant stopping Wells.

Stopping Wells is worth anything, even Barry's life.

Barry just really hopes it doesn't end up killing him before he can tell Len that it would be worth it, because Len will feel awful about it, just the way he felt awful about Mick, and that would suck. 

“- just know that it won’t be enough to stop me,” Wells continues. “It will never be enough.”

Is he still talking?

Ugh. 

Can’t a guy have a minute for some introspection about his boyfriend right before he potentially dies? Seriously.

They keep running the endless loops around Iron Heights. It's all vacant, now, with all the cons having slipped out and most of the guards safely evacuated as well, so the only time Barry sees anyone is when he passes by the room his friends are in.

Even in that room, though, the speed he's running at makes it seem almost unreal - a series of snapshots, separated by a few seconds, like one of those spinning visor toys that mimics video. 

Snap: Mick raising his gun as Nimbus looms above him.

Snap: Mick's gun blasting out a giant wave of flame, all at once.

Snap: Nimbus alight, screaming, a gaseous form lashing out with tentacles aflame.

Snap: Mick ducks.

Snap: One of Nimbus' now-partially-solid 'arms' whips into Mick's belly.

Snap: Mick goes flying, his midsection aflame.

Snap: Kara catches him.

Snap: Mick's midsection is somehow covered by a thin layer of frost.

(Yeah, Barry has no idea how that happened either - he's clearly missed something.)

Or take Iris, instead -

Well, no, it's not quite the same thing. Barry got one snap of Iris standing triumphantly over Tony Woodward's semi-conscious frame, that's basically going to be his mental screensaver from now until he heals from his middle school trauma.

So, like, forever.

After that, though, Iris ran over to help Eddie fight Mark Mardon, which Barry personally thought was not exactly good news. Mardon hates Joe West, might know who Iris West is, and he literally caused a _tsunami_. 

As much as Barry loves Iris, neither she nor Eddie has powers. They shouldn't be fighting Mark Mardon.

Except apparently they should be, because less than ten rounds later they're no longer fighting - he's helping them move wires around or something.

No, Barry has _no idea_ what’s going on there.

He doesn't even know where those wires came from!

Maybe they have something to do with the plan?

Maybe Len is off getting more wires. 

That would explain why in all the snaps so far, Barry still hasn't seen him - not since he started running.

Barry would really like to see him.

_Especially_ if he's going to die.

Damn, Barry's a superhero, he should get a dramatic last moment. Ideally with a nice goodbye kiss.

Ideally with magic resurrection happening five minutes later, while he's daydreaming.

Which he shouldn't be, because he's in the middle of a _supervillain boss battle_ against the guy who killed his mom.

Bad time to let your mind drift.

Personally, Barry blames the running - he's always found it easy to daydream while he's running -

"In the end you will come to understand -"

Holy crap, Wells is _still talking_!

"Seriously?" Barry demands, not breaking pace. "Could you can the monologue already? It doesn't matter what you say -" Like Barry was even listening. "- it doesn't change a thing! I'm never going to help you get back to your time period!"

"Oh, you will," Wells says. "You see, because of your refusal to help me, I'm going to brutally murder every one of your friends - and it'll be _your fault_ that they die."

Ouch. Right in the sore spot.

"And because I'm a speedster, too, I can keep you from going back to save them - let the timeline settle - make it _permanent_ \- or, at least, permanent enough for you to only be able to change it if you agree to aid me. What do you think about that, Barry Allen?"

"Honestly," Barry says, "it's about what I thought you were going to say, so - mostly bored?"

" _Bored_?!"

"It's the running," Barry says, faux-apologetically. "I'm so used to daydreaming, my mind drifts if there isn't anything worth paying attention to -"

Why yes, Barry can do some damn good passive-aggressive bullshit if he does say so himself.

(He might be an Allen, but he was raised a West.)

Wells looks murderous, which to be fair is how he normally looks when Barry is tweaking his nose, so Barry takes the moment to leap onto the wall and catapult himself forward for a little speed advantage.

That gets Wells' attention back on the race.

But he's still scowling, still murderous, and if Barry doesn't keep his attention, he's going to stop and Len's plan, whatever it is, will be ruined.

He has to keep running.

All his life, everything he loves, comes down to this race.

He runs.

"Faster, Barry!" he hears Iris shout.

He stops daydreaming, puts his head down, and runs faster.

Faster and faster, till he's going as fast as he can go -

"Faster, Barry!"

That was Len.

Huh, look at that.

Looks like Barry _can_ go faster.

Even Wells is concentrating now, mockery gone as he focuses on keeping pace, his eyes crackling red lightning, his steak of light besides Barry's.

Faster, Barry.

Faster.

"Run, Barry," he hears his dad say. "Run."

(Run, Barry! his mom shouts in his mind. Run!)

Barry puts everything he's got into his legs.

His heart, his soul, his mind -

Everything he's got.

He runs.

He doesn't even see snapshots of his friends anymore - it's all blurring together around him, streaks of light turning into smears of color. It's beautiful and unearthly, an impressionist painting gone mad, and it's something Barry knows at once he'll never be able to show anyone who isn't a speedster, that this is their secret alone. This is how it looks when he's about to travel in time, but there's no other-Barry running beside him to signal that he's broken that barrier, no sign of any time travel, of any anomaly.

Just Barry.

"The Speed Force!" Wells hisses behind him, his voice half-awed, half-jealous, and Barry realizes that this is what Wells couldn't achieve on his own: this detached euphoria, this moment where his mind is empty, his heart is at peace, and everything he is has been given over to the pure act of running.

Where everything, everything at all, is speed.

There's no space for other people here. No room for fear, no room for care - no room for   
anything at all.

It's suddenly easy. The running, the movement - it locks into place, a runner's high like no other, and suddenly Barry feels like he could do this forever. It's all clear now: how he could run through time if he wanted, how he could return Wells to his time or to go back and rescue his mother in hers, how Barry could do whatever he wanted, but why would he ever want to?

Why would he ever do anything but keep running?

Keep running.

Keep accelerating.

Keep moving.

No one can touch him here. No one can hurt him, or disappoint him, and make him vulnerable. No one to make him care about them. No one to disturb his perfect equilibrium, no one to knock him off his stride, no one to make him stop.

Perpetual motion.

Perpetual speed.

Perpetual peace.

And no one can touch him again, not even another speedster, because Wells is trapped in his own euphoria just beside Barry - visible but separate - distant - and who cares, anyway? This is why Wells doesn't care, Barry suddenly understands, this is why he murders with impunity those people who could never understand this, because what's it worth, what's any of life worth, in comparison to this bliss, this unending perfection? Nothing else matters, not anymore. All that matters is here and now. 

All that matters is the speed, the joy of running, the ecstasy of acceleration, because he's left everything else behind. 

He couldn't leave this place even if he wanted to, but why would he want to? All there is for him outside of here is pain -

"Barry!"

Len.

Len's voice, not strong but certain, splitting through the indifference of perfect, empty, vacant bliss like a lightning bolt. 

Len, who is waiting for him; Len, who is counting on him; Len, who hurt him -

Len, who loves him.

Love.

_Love_.

That's what this place is lacking, this 'Speed Force' that Wells wanted to reach so much, this place of pure joy.

It lacks love.

Because love isn't all joy, no, it's terrible and wonderful, painful even when it's good: it's the heartbreak and the reconciliation, the cold loneliness of missing someone and the fireworks of seeing them again, it's the inside of your lungs being squeezed out of you because you're so happy to see someone, it's your throat catching and choking on emotion so thoroughly fused that you don't know if it's good or bad, it's every tear you've ever shed for love coming back all at once - the agony and the ecstasy both.

Love.

Barry _loves_ Len.

And if he stays here forever, he'll never see him again.

No!

"Barry!"

That's not Len - that's Iris. 

Iris, his best friend, his past love, the one who he first began to love when he was a child and never stopped. The person who knows him best, the one who'll always be there for him, the one who has his back even when she's breaking his heart.

Love.

"Barry!"

Dad.

God, Dad. Barry might have lost his mom for good at age eleven, but he lost his dad as well - every holiday soured by their absence, every birthday bittersweet. Speaking to him only through glass, sadness drowning him but unwilling to give it up because the joy of seeing his dad, even like this, was so much greater. Telling him the best and worst parts of Barry's life, telling him about school and becoming a CSI and the hope that burned in Barry's heart - burned hot and ugly and painful, but a fire he tended to faithfully no matter how it hurt him - the hope of putting this wrong right one day.

Love.

"Barry!"

His friends. Friends already made and held dear; friends only in potential - Cisco, Caitlin, Kara, Mick - people he knows and people he can't wait to get to know. The fear of the unknown warring with the excitement of discovery.

Love.

Barry's anchors are all here.

So is Barry.

And suddenly, leaving the Speed Force behind is the easiest thing Barry's ever done.

Suddenly he’s just running again – strong and without pause, suddenly filled with more energy than he’s ever had before, but he’s not trapped in that blank trance, the nothingness and emptiness and loneliness of being utterly alone. 

“Barry.”

That’s Len’s voice again.

Len –

“I’m sorry, Barry,” Len says, and his voice is anguished. “Ramon, Rathaway, hit it!”

Ramon is Cisco, yes, but Rathaway? Isn’t that Hartley Rathaway, the one Cisco’s been calling the Pied Piper? What is he doing here?

And why did Len say he was sorry –

The world explodes.

It’s like being hit by lightning all over again. Not pain, exactly, just shock: every synapse blazing at once, every sensation - good bad mediocre - all bleeding together the way the light had earlier, hitting every single sense - touch sight sound smell taste - all at once as if the sensitivity of every single input in his body suddenly got turned up to eleven and he can feel it but at the same time his brain is just unable to process it all and opting to just give up, shutting down, going from color to black and he can't see and he can't hear and -

And suddenly he's tripping and falling and the world is spinning, spinning, spinning and everything in his body - mind belly brain - all seized by the strongest sense of vertigo he's ever experienced.

His stomach roils, his brain screams, his muscles spasm -

And then it's over.

Whatever "it" was.

Honestly, Barry couldn't give a damn what it was; he's just happy that it _stopped_. He's still dizzy, still a little nauseous, but it's fading; he's still shivering and shaking a bit, but that overwhelming shockwave of sensation is gone; and sure, he's a bit sore all over but hey, he's not falling anymore. 

So, in summary: he's sitting (well, lying) still, he's not about to throw up, he sees nothing but darkness behind his closed eyes, and his brain isn't on fire.

All good important things that Barry really hasn't appreciated properly up until now.

He’s going to appreciate them now. At length. While continuing to lie down and not move, because not moving sounds _great_ right about now. 

At least until his ears stop ringing. 

" - arry!"

Someone needs him.

Ugggggh.

They _always_ need him. Barry really needs to learn how to say no to things. 

Maybe Len could give him lessons.

Sexy lessons.

Mmmm.

"Barry!"

Oh, okay, _fine_. He's getting up already. Stop yelling.

Barry cracks an eye open. 

The world is blurry at first, which is a bit concerning, but then it all stabilizes back into a depressing blank grey slate roof. Very prison decor.

...because he is, in fact, in a prison.

It all comes back to him in a rush: Iron Heights! His dad! Wells! The Speed Force! Wells about to murder everyone!

Barry's eyes shoot open and he starts trying to scramble to his feet, except he feels heavy and slow and clumsy and -

"Barry, are you okay?" Iris demands. She's kneeling beside him, Len right next to her, and they're both pushing him down from getting up. 

His two favorite people, yay.

"I'm fine," Barry says, though he's pretty sure it comes out as something more like "Mmfin."

"Are you in pain?" Len demands, looking pale and guilty and -

Oh, right, the plan. 

The "it might hurt."

The "I'm sorry" that Barry still doesn't entirely understand.

"I'm fine," he says again, forcing himself to enunciate clearly. "What happened? Was that the plan?"

"Yeah," Len says, still looking distressed. "But you're sure you're okay? No pain?"

"Just dizzy," Barry assures him. "Wells..?"

"He's waking up!" Cisco yelps. "Guys! Someone! Do something!"

Len and Iris turn immediately, Barry forcing himself up to a sitting position - with some help from both Len and Iris - to see as well.

Wells is, in fact, waking up. Worse, he's _getting_ up - grimacing with an expression that suggests he's got some of the same nausea and vertigo that Barry had, but that he's powering through it.

"Whatever you did," he rasps, his eyes fixed on Barry, "it won't be enough. You can't stop me."

And then he runs straight at Barry.

Except -

He isn't moving at super speed. 

He's just - running. 

At regular speed.

He stops the second he realizes, coming to a half only a few steps away from them. "What have you done?" he shrieks.

"Holy crap that actually worked," Cisco marvels.

"Of course it worked," Hartley sniffs. And then, begrudgingly, he adds, "When we put our heads together, everything we do works."

Cisco looks thunderstruck. "Uh," he says. "Yeah. Definitely."

"Can someone catch me up to what happened?" Barry asks.

"You remember how Ramon installed a miniature version of the Accelerator in Iron Heights to keep the metas in?" Len asks.

"Yeah?"

"We exploded it."

"You what?" Wells shouts. “You did _what_?!”

"Technically," Hartley says, smirking at Wells, "we just followed your lead, O captain - after all, you were the one who designed the Accelerator to explode if it got overpowered."

"Say, by two speedsters racing through an environment not built to tolerate it the way STAR Labs is," Cisco says. "Barry, remember how your powers disappeared when Blackout hit you with his lightning drain? Like that, just - bigger."

Barry blinks. "So - my powers - they're _gone_?"

"Theoretically, yeah," Cisco says apologetically. "We needed you and Wells to over-power the Accelerator, so we couldn’t shield you from the blast. We theorized that the second blast would nullify the dark matter in your system -"

"Or blow your head up," Hartley says cheerfully. "One or the other."

"They're gone," Barry repeats blankly. "I'm - normal again."

He doesn't feel like he's normal again.

He doesn't really see no-powers as "normal" for him anymore.

Wait. If _his_ powers are gone -

He looks over to where Wells is standing, his mouth hanging open in shock.

"Wells' powers should be gone, too," Iris confirms. 

"Now we can arrest him," Len adds. "Bring him to justice - free your dad -"

"No!" Wells shrieks, and then he moves - not a speedster, but fast and unexpected, darting down to the ground and back up and suddenly he has Cisco's discarded vibration gun in his hands. "I'll see you all _dead_ first -"

Len brings his crutch down on Wells' head.

Wells collapses onto the floor, unconscious.

Everyone stares at Len.

"What?" he asks. "I _told_ you they make good weapons!"

Kara starts laughing first, but Barry's right there behind her, and it's only a few minutes before everyone else is cracking up, too. 

"Not to interrupt," Barry's dad says archly. "But as funny as this is, could someone please let me out of this cage?"

"On it!" Caitlin says, grabbing the vibration gun from where Wells dropped it and heading over.

"On that note," Mardon says dryly, "I'm gonna duck out before you decide to put me back in prison. I wanna get in a few hits on the Families before I leave town."

"Just keep it to Families," Kara warns. "Or we'll find you and stop you."

Mardon snorts. "Whatever. You already took my powers. What more you gonna do?"

"Iron Heights's regular wing ain't that much fun, either," Len drawls. "Go on, get."

"How come he agreed to help?" Barry asks as Mardon jogs out of the room. "Didn’t sticking around mean he'd lose his powers, too?"

"He _really_ hates Wells," Hartley says dryly. "And he's not alone." He shakes his head. "I'd better catch up with him; I'm probably his only means of transportation out of here."

"It was - weirdly fun working with you," Cisco offers hesitantly. "Like, when it's too much of an emergency for you to be a dick. So, you know, if there's another emergency - not that I want another emergency -"

"I'll call you," Hartley interrupts. "Maybe we can see how we work together when Wells isn't playing us against each other."

"Yeah! Yeah. That."

"See you around, Ramon."

He leaves.

"All things considered, leaving's not the worst idea in the world," Mick says, reaching down and scooping Wells over his shoulder like an unwieldy sack of potatoes. "City's on fire, the people are rioting, the Families and the Feds are brawling in the street, and I'm pretty sure the boss authorized all of it."

"...on second thought, maybe I should’ve let Wells get me," Len says, looking mildly horrified. 

"You're not dying," Kara says. "Not after all this effort!"

"Wait, we have to do _more_?" Cisco asks. "But we already defeated Wells!"

"The city's still going crazy," Eddie points out. "Our job doesn't end until peace is restored."

"That's why being a pig is a shit job," Mick says wisely. 

"I'm going to recruit you into the CCPD," Eddie tells him.

"Don't you fucking dare."

"You did good work here -"

"Stop!"

"- probably great with scaring kids straight -"

"Kids?!"

"Mick, he's pulling your leg," Len says. "Stop letting him."

"I don't know," Iris says thoughtfully. "If he’s not going to be a thief anymore, he _does_ need a new job now -"

"That can wait till later," Mick says quickly. "City to finish rescuing, remember? Besides, this guy needs to go somewhere secure 'till the boss can read him his rights."

"Detective Thawne can do that," Len says hastily. "I'm sure it'll be cathartic and all, what with him being his ancestor."

Eddie looks at him, his lips starting to curl up into a grin. "Captain, I hope you don't mind me asking -"

"That ain't a good way to start a sentence."

"- but have you ever read _anyone_ their Miranda rights? Do you even know what they are?"

A moment of silence.

"...I've had them read _to_ me a bunch of times?" Len offers.

That sets them all off laughing again.

"I know what they all are!" Len is protesting when Barry finally manages, with the help of Iris, to get up. "I know them inside and out - probably better than any of you - it's just that _saying_ them feels weird, that's all -"

Barry taps him on the shoulder.

Len looks at him.

"Barry," he says, levity suddenly gone. His eyes are intent on Barry's face, his expression solemn, and suddenly Barry can barely breathe with how much he loves him. It's like the entire world just shrinks down until there's no one there but them. "Barry - your powers - I -"

"Screw my powers," Barry says, interrupting. "We did it. We beat the bad guy. _Together_."

"But -"

"You didn't betray me," Barry says, because he knows Len well enough to know what's bothering him. "You knew how I felt about defeating Wells and I trusted you to do what needed to be done - and you did."

"You trust me," Len repeats.

"Yes," Barry says. "Because I love you."

Len breaks into a smile. "Yeah," he says. "And you ain't too shabby, either."

Barry laughs, pulls him into his arms, and kisses him.

Len kisses him back.

And it's - perfect.

Not the empty vacant perfection of the Speed Force, but a real perfection: love and joy and relief and pleasure and the hope of a future to come, a future together, a future untainted by the threat of Wells.

That sounds pretty much perfect to Barry.

Someone clears their throat.

Barry ignores them.

Someone clears their throat a second time, and this time taps Barry's shoulder, too.

Barry really doesn't want to stop kissing Len.

But then again, if he stops just long enough to tell whoever it is to buzz off, he'll be able to get back to kissing Len in an uninterrupted manner.

Barry pulls away reluctantly.

Then he turns his head and -

Oh.

It's his dad.

It's his _dad_!

His dad just saw him making out with his boyfriend!

"So, Barry," Henry Allen says, his eyes dancing with mischief. "Are you going to introduce me to Mr. Snart here, or am I going to have to call on our previous acquaintance from back when he was a fellow inmate?"

Oh _god_.

His dad just saw Barry making out with his boyfriend before Barry's even introduced them _and_ he thinks Barry’s boyfriend is a felon!

"I'm a police captain now, actually," Len says. 

"Really? That's nice."

"Yeah. Your son's pretty nice, too."

"I know he is. I'd offer to shake your hand, but you seem pretty reluctant to get it off his ass."

"He has a very nice ass," Len says, even as Barry buries his head in his hands. "One of the many nice things about him, really."

"Please," Barry says. "Both of you - just stop talking."

He considers.

"Also, erase the last five minutes from your memories," he instructs. "I refuse to let this be how you two meet."

"Too late," Iris cackles. "We've all seen it now. This is already filed, documented, and going into the Barry Allen File Of Embarrassing Moments _forever_."

"No!"

"Is that a real thing?" Mick asks.

"We're breaking it out for his wedding rehearsal dinner," Iris says.

" _Really_. Say, boss, would you consider -"

"Mick. Finish that sentence and I punch you in the face."

"Yeah," Barry says, unable to resist. "Because as an unquestioned authority in the subject, I can tell you that that would definitely be _moving too fast_."

Len kisses him again, just for that.


	23. 23

"I think this is the best date we've ever been on," Barry says.

Len, who's tugging at the blanket currently covering both their legs so as to get it into a more optimal cuddling position, pauses, blinking. That was - random.

"We're not doing anything special," he points out. "We're just going to watch some TV and eat some take-out, whenever it arrives."

"Exactly!"

Len looks at Barry, awaiting an explanation. 

"It's _normal_ ," Barry explains, grinning. "Just two slobs, hanging out and planning to stuff their faces with Thai food while watching some dumb sci-fi - because _someone_ vetoed mysteries -"

"I hate mysteries," Len says stubbornly. 

"They're fun! Figuring out the puzzle out of the clues -"

"Real life doesn't have convenient clues."

"You're not wrong, but that's why we're watching _TV_."

Len rolls his eyes. "You agreed to watch sci-fi tonight, so stop whining. We can watch a mystery next time."

Barry beams. "See, that's why this is the best date ever. There's going to be a _next time_."

"I feel like there was going to be a next time as soon as we had that first date," Len says dryly. "You remember, with me talking myself into investigating you for corruption and you carefully omitting anything about being the Flash?"

Then he winces.

He still feels bad about what he did, back in Iron Heights - making the cold, rational decision to risk Barry's life and to strip his powers away if it meant defeating Wells and saving their city. Yes, both Mick and Barry have told him that he's being ridiculous - well, Barry's told him he's being ridiculous, Mick just asked where the hell he'd gotten an overdeveloped conscience from and told him to check whether they had a valid return policy - but he can't quite help it.

His decision robbed Barry of his powers. Len’s very aware that by that point, they’d already become a major part of Barry’s identity, and Len just made that decision for him.

He’s still grateful it wasn’t Barry’s life. 

He’s painfully aware that he would have made the same decision even if that had been the cost – a speedster like Wells could have murdered an army and would’ve had time to slaughter civilians by the dozen before anyone even got close enough to stop him – but he’s desperately, pathetically grateful that he still has Barry here, by his side.

In his – well, couch.

"It's okay," Barry says, noticing the wince. "You know that I'd rather be sitting on a couch at regular speed with you than have both of us still be lying to each other at super-speed."

"Smooth," Len tells him fondly, "except for the way that metaphor got away from you towards the end there."

"Yeah, I wasn't sure how to bring it back from a plural to a singular. You know what I _meant_ , though."

"You get points for effort." Len leans over and kisses him, just to make sure that message sticks.

Also because he can do that now. 

He can just kiss Barry, any time he likes - well, anytime he likes as long as Barry isn't buried in one of his cases, anyway; Len's discovered, to his amusement, that Barry gets just as cranky as Len does when his train of thought is interrupted by nonsense like affection from a loved one.

It's apparently a tendency shared by all CSIs, no matter how usually cheerful - Barry's been having regular study groups with his CSI friends in his little on-site nook at the CCP, and even the perkiest among them growls like an angry terrier if Len’s decision to meander by to see if Barry is free for lunch disturbs a time-sensitive experiment.

But when Barry (or Len, for that matter) _isn't_ busy, it's free season for stealing kisses.

Len’s a very good thief.

But it’s okay, because Barry steals just as many.

Because they're officially boyfriends now.

Len spends about half his time terrified that he's going to screw this up and the other half deliriously happy with how things are going. 

They’ve had several long, in-depth conversations about telling each other the truth, several even longer discussions about various facts about their respective lives that might be useful for the other to know about, and finally, even longer than that, several make-out sessions to prove that they did, in fact, still want to go forward with this relationship.

Very important part of the truth-telling process, that.

(Really, the only downside of this is that Barry has now officially joined the group of people who can’t stand Charlie; Len has no idea what’s wrong with the way he’s explaining the guy that this keeps happening – Charlie’s harmless! Really! – but it does.)

But it’s not just their relationship that’s going well.

For what may be the first time in Len’s life, _everything_ seems to be going well.

After all, he’s somehow managed to keep his current job, which he actually really likes, and, with Kara's much-faster-than-normal help, he's actually finished the gigantic mound of paperwork that resulted from him getting both the blame and the credit for the quelling of the Election Day Riots, as they're now being called by the local media.

The national media keeps trying to call them the Primary Day Riots. Shows what they know.

To be perfectly honest, though, Len is just relieved that he narrowly missed getting elected mayor by write-in, and that only because people didn’t have time to agree on what position they wanted him to be serving in, which – no.

Just…no.

They can’t _make_ him take a political job. 

...he thinks, anyway. Good thing he didn't win.

At any rate, Len is pretty sure that the roomful of paperwork was meant to be an informal punishment from a governor, who was also awarding him a medal of some sort in recognition of his role in helping save the city. Joke's on her; she wasn’t aware that he had superheroic help.

Though it would've been nice to have Barry's help as well...

"Cisco says they're probably coming back, you know," Barry says, observing Len's expression and correctly figuring out where his thoughts are going. "My powers, I mean. Mardon's did, remember?"

"Nah," Len says. "The fact that we're having 20 degree weather in July's totally escaped me."

"Hey, the team at Mercury Labs swears they've _almost_ got his powers back under his control..."

"Poor guy," Len says, not without real sympathy. He likes Mardon; he liked him from the beginning, and the free grief therapy the guy is getting while sitting around Mercury Labs is only helping improve his personality. Clyde was always the more obnoxious of the two, anyway. "Weather control powers are one thing, a pretty awesome thing, but weather control powers that respond to your mood is just a curse. Not to mention the whole celibacy aspect..."

"Celibacy?" Barry asks, blinking; he’d clearly not thought about that. "Because he's being watched at all times by scientists and it’d be awkward?"

"Doubt that'd stop him," Len says dryly. According to Ramon, who watched over the prisoners in the Accelerator, it never did before. Not that Len has any sympathy – every time Ramon tries to complain, Len just reminds him that he's whining about that time he illegally imprisoned people and Ramon shuts right up. "No, I was thinking more about how the whole of Central City'd notice if his ‘cold wintery weather’ gloom gets abruptly interrupted by a sudden bout of nice weather, if you know what I mean..."

"Oooh, _ouch_. I hadn't thought of that. Poor guy. I hope Cisco and the others find him a fix soon."

"I'm sure they will," Len says. Rathaway and Ramon working together is exactly as terrifying as one would expect, and when you added Christine McGee to the picture...well. Len has no doubt that Mardon's powers will be under control soon.

Not least because Rathaway apparently has a vested personal interest in making sure that Mardon stops being involuntarily celibate as quickly as possible. 

(Len really, _really_ hopes Ramon’s offhand comment about there being a 10% possibility that everyone else involved in the Iron Heights battle would eventually develop powers over time turns out wrong. Ten to one are not odds he likes when it potentially comes to turning into an icicle or something irritatingly thematic like that.)

"Besides," Barry continues, "I don’t mind waiting for my powers to come back. It's not like I don't appreciate taking a few weeks off -"

"It's been nearly two months."

"- a few _months_ off of the superhero stuff. It's like having summer vacation again. Especially since I can rest assured that Kara is keeping an eye on the city -"

"You mean _Iris West_ is keeping an eye on the city," Len interrupts, rolling his eyes. "And Danvers is helping her enforce what she sees with her all-seeing eyes."

"And Mick," Barry adds mischievously. "Don't forget Mick."

Len rolls his eyes again, this time less at Barry than at his partner's antics.

Sure, it came as no surprise that Mick felt himself and his beloved heat gun were more suited for supporting Team (Now Licensed and Properly Supervised) Vigilante than the cops.

The surprise, such as it was, came from what he spent the _rest_ of his time doing.

Out of all the possible outcomes Len might have foreseen with Mick waking up and accepting Len's job as police captain, Mick getting a job with the CCPN as Iris West's bodyguard-slash-photographer wasn't anywhere near the list.

Still, Mick seems happy - he likes having an opportunity to bust heads together, he likes Iris, and he apparently has a natural talent for photography, especially photography in high-stress situations. Like, say, investigating one of the few remaining Family outposts while getting shot at by the few remaining Family thugs. 

(Mick is well aware that if he gets himself killed, Len will murder him. Iris has also been informed as much. Once that’d been established, though, Len gave them both his blessing to go as crazy as they liked, which both of them appreciated.)

By all accounts, Mick’s really enjoying his new work.

He's even taken up writing again!

Admittedly, he's still writing those weirdly addictive but somewhat embarrassing pulp romance novels, not journalism, but damnit, Len thought Mick was dead or dying: his joy at being forced to beta-read those novels again is inexpressible.

Especially since he's no longer Mick's only go-to proxy character. Len was getting tired of recognizing himself in both the snarky beloved sidekick and the villainous evildoer that shared a murky past with the hero, and he was even _more_ tired of the not-so-subtle hints that said sidekick should consider getting laid because it would make him less tetchy.

Now – to convince Mick to start publishing…

Maybe under a pseudonym?

"He's doing really well," Barry says, sounding genuinely pleased on Mick's behalf, and not just for Len's sake, either. Len's really glad they like each other. "Iris says she's having to keep him from getting poached by other reporters. Well, the few that remain."

Len snorts at the reminder. When the Families put out the call on Election Day, it wasn't just cops that answered; a disturbing number of journalists were found to be involved. Some of them turned back once the amnesty was offered, but not all of them, and even the ones that _did_ turn back are stuck on the non-political beat until they prove that their journalistic integrity can be trusted again.

In its own way, good journalism's ethical rules, however internal, are as strict as the one that govern the police...

Len scowls.

"Uh-oh," Barry laughs. "It’s the patented Leonard Snart vendetta face."

"I don't got a _vendetta face_ ," Len sniffs. "It's just..."

He trails off.

Yeah, he has no idea what he’s going to end that with.

It kind of is his vendetta face.

"Your 'no, actually, it wasn't just all about Mick-related trauma, I'm actually really just that personally offended by corruption' face?" Barry offers, his eyes crinkling with barely suppressed laughter.

"...possibly,” Len allows.

"You're already helping re-build the CCPD from the ground up, remember," Barry says, putting his head on Len's shoulder. He’s really good about signaling what he’s about to do in advance, which helps Len relax. Len’s never been great about physical contact, especially over-long contact, but he’s finding more and more that he’s able to get over that hurdle when it’s with Barry, who deeply enjoys occasional cuddling. 

Len’s learned to cuddle. Will wonders never cease. 

"Like, even putting aside your little purge –”

“It ain’t a purge. It’s an in-depth investigation and interrogation of every current member of the CCPD and the prosecutor’s office to find out if they have any vulnerabilities to blackmail or bribery and/or have experienced either of those recently. Totally different. We only purge ‘em if they’re _still_ being blackmailed or bribed.”

“Yeah, yeah, but putting that aside, you’ve got the CCPD putting in place all those new mandatory ethics trainings, the lessons on improving community engagement, recruiting all those new people - some of them out of the slums, people who might not have had a chance before - even the courts are being cleaned up now that the equivalent of your position has been created to do that -"

"And yet we still have people thinking it's okay to turn a blind eye when it suits their personal prejudices," Len growls.

"This is about Wells," Barry concludes wisely.

"It's about Wells," Len agrees. He’s still pissed about that. He’s always going to be pissed about that. "Eobard Thawne or whatever. Don't get me wrong, we knew he was a serial killer -"

" _Multiple murderer_ , Len, serial killer is a term of art and I _know_ that you know that -"

"Whatever, he killed lots of people, sometimes in a serial aka sequential fashion -"

"I'll accept that.”

"- and I ain’t denying that it would've been hard to do it if we had to risk his powers coming back sometime, too, yeah, but damnit, the bastard still deserved a proper trial! Not to just get murdered in a cell somewhere!"

"Well," Barry says slowly. "And I know I'm biased here, being the son of one of his victims, but personally speaking I'm not all _that_ upset that Wells got ‘accidentally’ locked into Iron Heights with a bunch of pissed-off Family members looking for revenge for the whole Election Day mess."

It was a nasty, ignominious death, stuck in a cell and forgotten about by everyone but the ones he thought he could play like pawns. A death without drama, without grandeur - without Barry, the subject of Wells’ long-running obsession.

Without the powers that made him something to be feared.

Without the Speed Force .

Len can see why Barry's main feeling on the subject is an overwhelming sense of catharsis. Not to mention that this way, Barry won’t have to go to court to testify against a man he once considered a mentor and even a father figure, and who betrayed him so thoroughly. 

Still...

"I know," Len says, turning his head and kissing Barry's hair lightly. "And that's why you're going to go through the entire ethics course I've been designing with the criminal justice defenders' guild."

Barry pretends to groan, but Len knows he doesn't really mind. Barry's a good person at heart, but he's got some _serious_ ethics relearning to do.

They all do.

Central City's getting cleaned up at last.

"It's for the best, really," Barry says with a sigh. "I went _way_ closer to the Ralph Dibny Line of No Return than I'm really comfortable with."

Len smirks. Now that's one outcome he's not even slightly upset about.

It turned out Dibny did possess enough fellow-feeling to go assist the cops in keeping the riots down and restoring the peace, and he'd done a pretty decent job helping out. Decent enough, in fact, that Len had agreed for it to be counted in his favor during his sentencing.

"Sentencing?!" Dibny exclaimed when Len had told him as much. "What sentencing?! There was an amnesty!"

"Which applies to everything the Families manipulated or forced people into doing," Len agrees. "Funnily enough, though, according to what you told us earlier, no one was actually _forcing_ you to blackmail the mayor..."

"That's not fair!"

"You'll have a chance to plead your case, same as everyone else," Len assured him. "If you can find a way to argue that the Family made you do it, it'd be covered by the amnesty."

"Oh. Okay. That's not so bad -"

"Of course," Len interrupted, putting on his best toothy smile, "that only applies to stuff within range of Election Day, and not, let's say, to _earlier_ crimes. Like, say, revealing confidential intel about undercover officers..."

"Aw _shit_."

"You're probably not that bad a guy, Dibny," Len said thoughtfully, reveling a little in Dibny's disgusted expression. "I've seen your record. You started out - well, about as much of a misogynistic asshole as you are now, but at least you were straight. And then you weren't even that. Do the time you always should've done for what you did in the first place, framing that guy and selling me out. Take some ethics courses while you're inside, and maybe when you get out there'll be something worth keeping around."

Yes, most of that little speech had been at one Barry Allen's instigation, but Len wouldn't have said it if he didn't think there was the slightest glimmer of truth there.

"Thanks," Dibny grumbled, not particularly appeased. "Any chance we can do that without the prison time?"

"Lemme think about it - no, wait, already thought about it. Answer’s no. Go to jail, don't pass Go, don't collect two hundred dollars, and next time, _don’t out undercover officers to mobsters_. Officers, if you would..?"

At least there were enough cops going in at the same time that Dibny wouldn't run the risk of being shivved in his sleep by angry criminals. 

Though if he didn't make an effort at improving that charming personality of his...

Yeah, that'd been fun.

Nearly as much fun as having Singh casually swinging by Len’s office to inform him, purely as a professional courtesy, that they'd finished processing one Lewis Snart. Moreover, in the process, they’d happened to find a whole bunch of open warrants, got a judge to put him on an accelerated trial schedule, and, before Len even remembered his dad was still in town, Lewis’d been sentenced and was going away for a very, very long time.

Len still can't really believe it.

(He's getting weekly text messages from the prison warden that re-confirm he's still there. Sometimes time-stamped photographic evidence is included. It hasn't stopped making him happy yet.)

"You know it's not actually called the Ralph Dibny Line of No Return, right?" Len asks, hiding his amusement.

"I'm going to call it what I like and you can't stop me," Barry declares, although the way he's now very comfortably snuggled in against Len's shoulder rather undercuts the forcefulness of it.

Len snorts. "Bearing a grudge, Barry? How un-heroic."

"I'd say something snarky in response, but I'm still awed by your hypocrisy there, Mr. 'All Cops Are Corrupt' Black Pot."

"Whatever you say, my little kettle," Len faux-coos, making Barry wrinkle his nose. 

"I don't _usually_ bear grudges -"

"Says the guy still guilt-tripping Joe West?"

"Hey, he's doing a lot better now," Barry protests. "He's talking with Francine through a mediator and going to family counseling with Iris and he's getting to know Wally - he's so proud -"

"I meant about your dad," Len says dryly. "That whole bit where West not believing you led to a good man rotting in jail for fifteen years while a mass-murderer ran around killing more people?"

"In fairness, it was a pretty unbelievable story," Barry says, managing to maintain a straight face for exactly three seconds before he cracks and grins broadly the way he does any time his dad - or his brand new acquittal - gets mentioned. "Yeah, okay, maybe a _bit_ of teasing. For a bit longer."

Len looks at Barry skeptically.

"A bit longer...like maybe the rest of time," Barry allows, still grinning. "Okay, you're right, I'm never letting him live it down, but only because I was totally right, _so there_."

That's Len's Barry, in all his petty human glory.

Len still can't believe how much he loves him sometimes. It’s like getting punched in the gut every time he looks at him, a feeling that knocks the breath out of him, and yet he keeps looking over and over and over.

And best of all, Barry feels the same, so they’re both going to have many opportunities to keep looking as much as they like going forward.

"How _is_ your dad doing?" Len asks. "That payment for his wrongful incarceration finish coming through yet?"

"Not all of it – some of it’s still tied up given how many of those payments are coming out all at once, since they don’t actually want to bankrupt the whole city – but he's got most of it by now. He's doing really great – he finally closed on that cabin in the woods not far outside Central he was looking at for so long, the one he swears used to belong to our family even though I don’t remember anything like that. He’s already in talks with lots of people to start putting his plan for the place into effect, too…he's turning the whole place into a halfway house for people who were in Iron Heights, did you know that? Anyone still suffering from the aftereffects."

"Yeah, I know," Len says, amused. Doc Allen - he's always going to be Doc Allen, no matter how long it's been since he was a practicing surgeon - came to Len to ask his thoughts on the subject before he started investing real time and money into the plan.

Luckily for the Doc, Mick was also there with Len when he asked, because otherwise Doc Allen might've mistaken Len's overwhelming horror at the thought of rustic rural living as disapproval of his idea, which would’ve been a mistake since Len actually thinks it’s a great idea. Mick, still a farm boy under all those criminal layers, was far more outwardly enthusiastic about the possibility of ex-cons - many of whom trusted Doc Allen after his many years of even-handed and generous provision of medical services - working out their issues and figuring out where they want to go next far away from the harsh public eye.

Len even passed on his personal recommendations for people to go there through the cardboard brigade, though he politely asked that Magpie not pass along his facial expressions at the thought of non-city life while she did so.

Based on what he's heard since, he's pretty sure she declined to grant that request, but apparently a Leonard Snart recommendation that went, "Well...if you _want_ to leave the city...don't know why anyone in their right mind would, but if you _wanted_ to...and you actually liked, y'know, trees and dirt and shit like that...in that case, Doc Allen’s probably the best option you’ve got." was significantly more believable than any more cleaned up version.

(Iris and Danvers and probably Mick all helped Doc Allen with his advertising posters, which is why that particular quote is now plastered verbatim on walls and lampposts all over the slums. Len has vowed to obtain vengeance at some upcoming date.)

"It's nice, you know?" Barry says, interrupting Len's drifting thoughts. "At first I was disappointed that he wasn't planning on staying closer, you know. I'd sort of imagined he'd be around all the time, be my dad again, except then someone convinced him to stick around for a week - I don't know who, other than it wasn't you -"

Len shrugs. Barry's not wrong; Len still barely understands why someone would be disappointed at having fewer father figures in their life.

Personally, Len suspects Iris. What else are best friends for?

"- and, you know, at first it was amazing but then I started to go back to work and it was weird. Like, I love him, don't get me wrong, he’s my dad! We had a few days of just catching up and it being great, but after that, well, I am just _way_ too old to be parented 24/7 – the last time we lived in the same house, I was eleven, and oh boy can you _tell_ – and on his side, he didn't have anything else to do during the day and...yeah. I don't know. Weird. Now we call or skype for a few minutes every night and I go visit him every other weekend and that's _so much better_."

"Everyone wants to see their dad at their own intervals," Len allows. Reluctantly.

Barry snorts. "Yeah, and yours can be measured in radioactive half-lives of several hundred thousand years."

Again - not wrong.

It’s kind of nice to have someone other than Mick or Danvers who can read Len that well.

It being someone he wants to kiss is really just a pleasant bonus.

"Still, it's nice," Barry says, returning to the subject. "Having all this family around is just the _best_. There’s Dad up at the cabin; Joe at work - don't make that face, he's gotten much better, especially now that he's dating that DA; Cisco and Caitlin working as scientific liaisons to the CCPD, technically as part of the CSI department – they hit it off fantastically well with Terri, Gila and Andre, you know, so that was awesome; Iris and Eddie moving in together and looking at houses and maybe setting a wedding date; Mick living with Danvers and making all that _amazing food_ -"

That last one is a pretty recent development. 

Mick started off living in Len's place, but there'd been a _reason_ they usually stayed in warehouses when they’d been criminals and it wasn't because being innately compatible partners made them innately compatible roommates. They hated being parted, yes, but when living together they tended to fall back on habits developed while being cellmates in prison and that wasn't really great for anyone.

Len hadn’t wanted to trade in his comfortable apartment for a warehouse again. But on the other hand, Len hadn't wanted Mick to move out, either. He couldn't bear to lose Mick again, and it felt like he would if he let Mick out of his sight for too long.

Also not a great situation.

There was a lot of friction, to say the least. 

And then Danvers found out that Mick could cook and liked to do so in very large quantities, and immediately (spontaneously) blurted out an offer to be _her_ roommate.

Her current apartment was too small and too distant for that to work out, but with the addition of Mick's nest egg (both the legal one Len's been stockpiling for him and the slightly more illegal results of pawning his stash, which Len carefully opined on only in hypothetical terms) they were able to afford a nice two-bedroom apartment in the same building as Len - albeit on a much higher floor. 

(Danvers needs the roof access, for obvious reasons.)

And now, Mick is only ever an elevator ride away.

Of course, now so is Danvers - the fact that she’d previously kept her distance is apparently the only reason he didn't figure out her powers before, because she's a great believer in the idea of "dropping in" by floating down to knock on his window anytime she had an idea or a question or Mick needs some extra eggs - but Len doesn’t really mind that.

He likes Danvers. Not just as an employee, but as a friend. 

He’s still never calling her Kara, though. At this point, it’s not because he doesn’t want to get emotionally close to her – that ship’s already sailed – but rather because he’s just gotten so damn used to using ‘Danvers’ and because she thinks it’s hilariously detective noir of him.

He thinks it might be an in-joke. He’s never had in-jokes with anyone but Mick and Lisa before. 

So yeah, he’s cool – pun intended – with Danvers living upstairs.

Now to make things absolutely perfect, all he needs to do is to get over himself enough to convince (or even, you know, _ask_ ) for Barry to move in...

Yeah. Len’s gotta agree with Barry: having family around is the best.

Actually, now that he thinks about it -

"Speaking of which," Len starts, "there's something -"

The doorbell rings.

"Ooh, hold that thought," Barry says, pulling away and leaving Len significantly colder. Cold puns and fondness for a nice chill aside, Len disapproves. "That must be our Thai food."

"Probably is. Someone should get it." Len gives Barry a pointed look when he doesn’t move. "Maybe someone like you, since I got up to get the blanket."

"But I'm barefoot," Barry whines. The way he’s already starting to unwind himself from the couch suggests that he’s already accepted his fate, though.

"So run," Len says mercilessly.

Barry sticks his tongue out at Len, laughs at Len's resulting expression, leans over to give him a kiss -

The doorbell rings again, somewhat more insistently this time.

Barry breaks the kiss, groaning. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he calls, climbing out of their little blanket nest on the couch while trying to expose as little of Len as possible. Sometimes (definitely not always) considerate, his Barry. "Hold your horses - yowch, this floor is _freezing_!"

"Run, Barry, run," Len teases.

Barry rolls his eyes at him and does.

In a flash of light and a crackle of lightning.

Well, _that_ was unexpected.

Len's eyebrows shoot straight up, but it's not a bad surprise by any means. 

"Something you forgot to tell me?" he calls out, putting on his best lazy drawl to hide his sheer glee. Barry’s powers are finally coming back!

"No," a very unexpected, very familiar, very _welcome_ female voice drawls right back. "Something you forgot to tell _me_ , I think."

"Lisa!" Len exclaims, beaming at her. His beloved baby sister - not so baby, of course, a fully grown woman, but his nonetheless. "I didn't think you were arriving till tomorrow."

"I got bumped onto an earlier flight," she says, coming over - holding a bag of delicious smelling Thai takeout that she must've lifted off the delivery guy - and giving him a brief kiss on the cheek. 

Positively effusive, for Lisa; neither she nor Len were all that great at physical contact (Barry apparently excluded, on Len's part). She must've really missed him.

It’s been far, far too long since he’s seen her in person.

She looks as gorgeous as ever – formerly blonde hair gone brown, black leather jacket with gold trim matching black leather pants, make-up as ridiculously sharp as always…

His little baby man-killer.

Len can’t wait to inflict her on everyone he knows now.

"Sorry it took so long for me to finish things up back in Gotham," she adds insincerely.

Len snorts. "You were just waiting to hear that I got my stitches taken out for good this time."

"No lie," Lisa agrees comfortably. She’s utterly shameless when she wants to be, but she wouldn’t be his Lisa if she wasn’t. "Speaking of lies and omissions, though, something you failed to mention about the otherwise famous Barry Allen...?"

"I didn't know myself that his powers came back until just now," Len protests. "And there was no point raising your hopes by telling you about 'em if they never did come back..."

"I didn't know they were coming back either," Barry says dryly. "Or, you know, that your sister was coming to visit."

"I was _planning_ on telling you. Just now, actually!"

"Hopeless, ain't he?" Lisa asks Barry with a smirk, which he returns with a smile. "So, all that about you being a superhero's true, huh? I thought Len'd gotten metaphorical in his old age -"

"Never. Take that back."

"Not in a million years, jerkface."

"Trainwreck."

" _Cop_."

"Ouch. Right where it hurts."

Barry laughs, his shoulders relaxing. Sibling bickering he knows how to deal with. 

"Technically I'm a cop, too, you know," he says mildly. "I work as the on-site CSI for the CCPD, and, now that my powers are coming back, I can finally use that superhero license Len got me."

"He's classified as somewhere between a freelance employee and a tank," Len says proudly. That took some serious rule-smithing to get squeezed through, but the CCPD now has an officially licensed superhero division. Len pushed successfully to get it under Singh’s jurisdiction. Coincidentally, Singh’s precinct ended up being where Len decided the permanent offices of the internal affairs division would go, too. Purely coincidence, really… "Just with extra ethics courses."

Barry hadn't appreciated that very much, and neither had Danvers, but Len is adamant about it. If someone’s going to be acting as a standalone vigilante, even with city approval, then they are damn well going to know the laws of Central City inside and out, and know how to apply them in an ethical fashion to boot.

"Enough about tanks," Lisa says, waving a hand. "Allen, why don't you and I go to the kitchen to get some plates and cutlery for the take-out, and while we're there we can talk a bit more about _shovels_?"

"Uh. Sure? Len, should I be scared?"

"Terrified," Len cheerfully informs him.

"That's not promising," Barry says, but he follows Lisa towards the kitchen anyway. "It's not fair, you know. By the time we started dating - for real dating, I mean, after the whole blow-up - he was already friends with my best friend, a hero to my other friends, helped rescue my dad from prison and already threw my foster dad in jail once; there wasn't anyone _left_ to give Len a proper shovel talk on my behalf-"

Len starts laughing even as Barry's voice trails off when he walks into the kitchen. 

Yes.

Having your family all around you is the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed how this fic turned out :)


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